A change of perspective...

My senior year in 1981 as an EE student, I had a Design Project to implement a Kalman Filter on an 8086 processor. It was very rewarding, and I still remember with fondness not so much the actual project, but the relationship I had with my sponsoring professor, Dr. Dan Muldavan. I worked hard and spent many hours in the lab working with a clunky development system and progress was slow. When I got stuck though, Dr. Moldavan came in to the lab with me and worked side by side. On one particular Saturday, he came in early and left late with me, and I remember leaving that night with a different view of my professor. He had treated me as a peer and it left me wondering if I would experience the same thing in my professional career.

I am now in the position of the mentor with the experience and confidence, and still remember to this day how much it meant to me to be treated not as a student, but as a colleague working on a problem together.

Thanks for letting me share.