So to get started for the month of November, I’m Joey Meyer, an architectural engineering graduate from December of 2011. I grew up in St. Louis as the second oldest of four in a host foster family who essentially lived at the ballpark. In addition to playing baseball, I’m still a big Cardinals & Blues fan. That is of course in addition to living and dying with Jayhawk football and basketball. The photo here with my younger sister is from one of the better games during my college tenure – the Georgia Tech upset in 2010.
I work for Fire Dynamics, a division of Henderson Engineers in Lenexa, Kansas. As a fire protection systems designer my work is primarily concerned with the design of fire alarm and sprinkler systems, but I am also commonly involved with building code and standards compliance. At Henderson Engineers, I’ve worked on a wide variety of projects such as high end retail, healthcare, restaurants, community centers, shopping developments, businesses, car dealerships, schools, and sports architecture. I’ll get into more of the details of my work later this month.
So the first topic I’ll cover is one thing I’ve learned in industry. And that is all about ‘questions’. I’ve heard over the years many things about questions. “Ask lots of questions.” “There is no such thing as a bad question.” “You talk too much.” And while the advice is very helpful, I want to caution readers that the questions we ask give a direct reach from the person we’re speaking with into our mind. In a way, the questions we ask are a direct means of expressing (1) our level of knowledge and (2) our lack of knowledge. I’ll express my sentiment by an experience I had on my first day at my first internship.
It was the morning that I came to the project site about an hour and a half late because I drove to Washington Street rather than Washington Avenue. Believe it or not, Washington Street is in St. Louis County, quite a drive from Washington Avenue located in downtown St. Louis. A frantic phone call from the new intern helped sort out the issue, but nonetheless I never lived that one down. Back to the ‘question’ – in response to my first task in simply making copies of a stapled meeting agenda, I nervously asked something to the effect of “I should probably remove the staple before scanning?” As you can imagine, I was answered with a very patient that-would-be-a-good-idea-to-avoid-destroying-the-copier-on-your-first-day kind of smile. Was it important that I asked? Yeah, probably. Would common sense have served me better? Yes, immensely. It wasn’t but a few seconds after letting that rhetorical flop of a question that I decided I wasn’t going to ask a stupid question again.
Span forward a few years, to my third internship. As part of the learning-from-stupid-things philosophy I try to
uphold, I was told that I ask great questions during my employee review. Funny, especially knowing where I had come from. The difference in between these two events was a point I learned and now hope to pass on. It’s not that asking questions is bad-actually quite the opposite. Questions are probably the single most important means to gain knowledge and do any job well. Be sure to ask them. But also be sure to ask quality
questions. Asking quality questions with real thought and understanding proves your level of preparedness and intelligence and can be immensely valuable. So ask quality questions.
Now for a shot out of left field – restaurant advice. If you like sandwiches I would highly recommend 23rd Street’s turkey stack. Not only is it made with green sauce of delicious unknowns, but the sandwich is huge. The second half of the sandwich also saves remarkably well for the next day’s lunch.
If you have ideas for topics going forward, let us know! My contact information is posted on our alumni website with much more information about what’s going on with us at www.selfalumni.org.
See you next week and have a great weekend!
Joey