S4E117 Industry vs academia, a teeny rant

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Transcript

Speaker 1 (0s): All right, bows and bow ties. Good morning. It's a rainy day. So I, I don't know how this is going to turn out, but I just wanna talk about education, emia, et cetera. Most story short, I wanna say first I do like academia, I think it's important for people who study systems, whether it's a medical system, a computer system, social systems, economic systems, any form of financial systems, I think it's incredibly important for people who study systems the way things are.

The theory behind things is such, I do find that there's value in that. Understanding trends and, and, and all that good stuff, right? Making hypotheses about what could happen based off of data you may have modeled, but the, the, the issue I have with academia is like, it's, it's, it's also that. It's like they have these ideas based off of what they studied, what they think something should be.

And I feel like they don't necessarily include the reality. They don't really take account. And, and let me, okay, let me back up for a second. I know they logically take, they take it to account for the human in the loop, right? but I feel like oftentimes they teach you from a university standpoint how it's supposed to be on paper.

What does the book say? And it ain't give you case studies and, and such. And I remember having this conversation about engineering a while ago. People were like, well, why didn't you want to stay in school and teach it? I'm like, because I wanna apply it, right? And also, you make more money outta the industry. Like, let's be for real. I don't want to just teach that I think there is a space for people who love to teach and expand minds. like you need people like that who can, you know, transfer knowledge in terms of what the concept should be and the methodology and such.

But then you have those people who want to affect change, affect change out in any, any industry. Like I said, it can be the finance industry, medical industry, engineering, social, you know, studying social systems, economic systems, et cetera. You have people who wanna make changes. That's where a lot of the real change comes from. It's not just sitting in a classroom. I had this conversation before about academia. They talk about all those things, about all things you should be doing.

And I'm like, but people are going to come up with solutions in the real world. 'cause, but academia doesn't really, I say this tongue in cheek, they don't take into account all of the different fermentations that can happen, right? When you're out in the real world doing said things. So, you know, they come up with some problems. But at the end of the day, some of your problems may really just be environmental. Some of your problems may be based off of the people who are working the solution, what their social demographic may be.

It can find so many things, and I know there's classes on that type of thing. But ultimately, the various problems you will look to solve in whatever chosen field. The people who are out there trying to solve the problem, they're gonna be solving the problem based off of constraints that may or may not be accounted for in a classroom such as budgets, such as, it could be time, right?

It could be based off of another department constraints. It could be based off of so many things. Where am I going with that? You know, I remember like a year or so ago, I'm constantly having conversations with my oldest son and we talk about change, and I said, your generation has the opportunity to up affect change, but in order to affect change, generally speaking, you still want to study the system.

So you get an idea of what it is, and now you can objectively from the outside or whatever, based off of your set of experiences, whatever, you can look to make a change. But you can't, it's not good to try to change something that you don't understand anything about. So you use college as a foundation, you know, to get basic understanding and exposure. And then after that, you leave college and you go out and you explore.

My son used to say, education doesn't mean anything. I'm like, education means a whole lot. I was like, you know, you learn a lot in college. You get, it's a, a precursor to how to work with all kinds of people, rich people, poor people, black people, non-black people, men, women, people from the northeast versus the southwest. you know, people who grew up in, in urban environments, people who grew up in rural environments. you know, people are constantly having to solve problems.

The way they solve their problems may differ. And now you can bring these minds together, bang their heads together, like click lack, and come up with a, a solution that can, can be federated across multiple areas, right? I think the biggest thing was when I was talking to my son, I was like, you cannot discount a formalized education though. You cannot discount what it's like to network with other people. You cannot discount what you're gonna learn from somebody who grew up in an environment different from you and what you can teach someone else.

You cannot discount what you learn in terms of finance and social, because those are the things that you're like, why do I have to study this? Like, you know, when I took a sociology class, I learned a lot. I don't remember anything. But the interesting thing about that sociology class, I'm so sorry guys. This rain is like ignorant. When I took that sociology class, it exposed me to understanding mean, just data, grouping the data in people.

Right? Now, I'm not a sociologist, but as I've gotten older and you rethink, you learn and observe and everything like that, you start to understand the importance of like maybe sociology, how they use it in business, right? And so I was trying to get my son to understand being exposed to other areas of study is so beneficial. So, let me whack out where those out here tell you, oh, you don't need college.

Black people need college. And it's not that other people don't need college, but black people are economically disadvantaged in comparison to other groups of people. But now let me circle back to the point of where I was going with this. My belief with academia is, is that it's, it's they are, I I feel like they're still closed off. They, they stand up And, they And, they preach behind these podiums and talk about all these things as if like they're all knowing And, they know a lot, but at the end of the day, they don't have that industry experience.

At least most of them do not. I am a big proponent of obviously working out of industry. I've learned more being out in industry than being stuck in a classroom. I just dust it off some knowledge. Yesterday we were talking about when you're putting together a system and some of the things that can go wrong with the system, and it may be dust off knowledge, check this out.

But when I was in college, I have PTSD over it. When I was in college, let me just hold on, let me explain this for a second. My degree is in material science and engineering. I don't do this in industry. I'm a systems engineering industry, but my degree is in material science, in, in engineering and a material sciences or materials engineer, I had to study polymers, which is your plastic ceramics, your glasses, and your metallurgy and your material science engineers just stick with you for a second.

They are the people who like my, okay, my concentration, my was in biomed. So you want people who understand how to have the human body can, can view and, and work in, in unison with this foreign object or an implant. But if you're getting a, a, a rod put in your back or implant, you know, put or, or screws in your knee or something like that, your material science scientists, but I will also create your fictional tile or the, the, the, the engine block, the the block around your engine for your car or all those things, right?

They have to understand this is the kind of material this, see if this material you want to use so that we hide heat is cycling through something. Well, we know that it can withstand the heat. But then you start looking at like, how many cycles of something can we take before you know, it experience fatigue because it may be extremely brittle like a ceramic. So anybody who were, oh, thinking about something yesterday, And, they were talking about a particular system. It's like a mega system we were putting together.

And I, we were talking about some of the stuff on how they're put together. I'm like, I'm getting PTSD because they're combining these types, different types of solids. And when you're combining solids, I, in college, I had to take the thermal dynamics of, now for those of you who know, you know, thermodynamics in general, I hated thermo dynamics. I don't thermodynamics, I just want you guys to understand I have full on PTSD for it. I didn't do all that great in regular engineering thermodynamics.

And then because of my major, 'cause I was a materials engineer. I have to take the thermodynamics of solids. Okay? So I I, I'm already in flashbacks. I need a support group. I need to be on somebody's couch. And where I'm going with that was I had to learn a lot about like how to soli work because you got like liquids and all these different things and understanding the different types of things. What happens when you're combining these things in these environments and heat, it's no heat and a constant pressure and no pressure and tension and don always other things. So after I barely got through the thermodynamics solids, I did not expect to recall this information.

But when you're out in an industry and you're looking at things and you look at the way something will be used, right? There's the intent on how it's gonna be used, and then there's reality on how you're gonna use something. You're like, this could be a problem. And where I'm going with that, I think that where I was going with this was academia is great. They teach you the basics, they teach you all that good stuff.

But then there's the reality of when you're in industry, there's the reality of like, you get a baseline knowledge and now you go to industry and you exploit that knowledge and you find ways of solving problems. That's what engineers do. They solve problems. And I told my son, look, you need to understand you can change the world, but you need to get a baseline understanding of what it is you're dealing with.

I'm like, because those teachers are going to get you to a certain level and understand that those professors, those teachers, those PAs are extremely assistant, they're not gonna have that industry experience. And that's when you, you, you spread your wings, you get out there and you do great things. And there's nothing wrong with academia, but I, see for what it is, like they, they can be a little kind of like closed in.

I don't know if any of this conversation made sense. It was based off of a couple of things that I had had a conversation about, oh, over the last day or two and conversations I had with my son, there was no real full structure to it. And I know that this is the kind of conversation that you want the Black, Opinionated Woman to have on her channel. But You know, I have a lot of opinions. I typically don't like to talk about things like engineering related, although I should. And the reason why I don't talk about those things is because I bore myself.

I don't wanna talk about work, I don't wanna talk about engineering. I'm old and cranky. I don't wanna deal with it. you know, there's lots I could talk about and I know I probably should get back in that way. but I, I don't want to, I don't like talking about it. And to be honest, most of the people in our community, from what I've seen and have observed, they just wanna shake their behind anyway. They don't wanna do anything that's gonna require them to put it in the hard work, right? And solve these big complex problems. And let me just say this for the record, since I'm on a little bit of a rant, this isn't related to academia.

So this is just an opportunity for me to just make, take one more shot. And I know this is petty, but just hear me out. This is the reason why when Kanye, when Kanye was being so called canceled, if you call it canceled, I, I felt like I made the comment before people got back, but I was like, Kanye wanted that quick money. And I get it, he made a lot of money. But at the end of the day, 'cause he owns nothing, he didn't solve a big problem, he didn't do anything with that.

They were able to take a lot away from him too. And he still had a lot of money, but it wasn't like he created his own social media platform, which is why they were able to silence him for a period of time. It wasn't like he created or established the home banking system, which is why JP Morgan and Chase or whatever it was, they, they told him that your money is no longer good here. It wasn't like he created his own manufacturing plant. He used somebody else's manufacturing plant. He lent his name out, his brand out, right?

So then when they said, we no longer wanna make your shoe, we had to go now we had the silly ignorant people were like, yeah, yeah, he still gotta get paid. Well, of course he still has to be paid out, whatever else, but he could have had an opportunity to affect major change. Had he, he sees how the system works, he could have established it and he could have taken it into an economically depressed area and opened up jobs. Now I'm saying this, I'm, I'm, I'm oversimplifying, but when you understand how things work, you know, understand you need banking systems as part of your infrastructure.

There's your financial portion. you know, you got the social media portion, like they silenced him. They said, we don't want your money. Don't put your your money in our bank. They got, they, they silenced him on social media for a period of time. They made him, they picked him. They like, look, we're not manufacturing stuff. He didn't own anything and he got on, on, on, you know, social media wanting you crying before they silenced him. Like they were trying to keep a black man down. They're trying to make me a non billionaire. I'm like, you, no, you did that to yourself because see, if you had done what you need to do, you could have been prepared, laid that into something else instead, you were lazy, you were always looking for somebody to give you something, to give you the platform, to give you the manufacturing, to give you the banks versus you creating and establishing something yourself.

I said what I said, now going back to where I was going with this, I said, we have banking, we have systems, I'm sorry, systems that these professors can teach us about, but they can only take us from so far And. they, you have to get out into the real world and solve the real problems. All right? I should probably stop talking because I know you guys are like, what is she talking about? but I, look, I just wanted to talk about some stuff. I don't wanna talk about P Diddy.

I didn't wanna talk about him today. I'm like, he's not a good guy. I don't wanna talk about 45. I don't care. I don't want to talk about all those things. I'm like, can we talk about something else? And it doesn't mean I won't wanna talk about those things tomorrow, but I just don't want the sum total of anything I can talk about has to be about that. Or why black women are mad about something. Everybody in the United States is mad about something all the time. You got 5 million movements going on. Everybody's mad. I, think I'm mad about something.

I don't know what it is, but I'm mad about something. Some I, somebody's making me mad. Maybe I'll speak about it like later on. I don't know. but I just feel like we need to have these kinds of conversations and it seems like such a low level conversation. but I mean you can read through some things. We need to have other kinds of conversations out here. We talk about some of the stupidest stuff. Like I can't keep up with these things. If they said, for a man million dollars, what does low willow look like?

I was like, I know. I couldn't even tell you what the chick looked like, but I mean. but I, I just heard a song when I got in the car, the one with Meg, the stallion, and I don't even know who else was on it. Maybe it was Cardi B, I don't know. Anyway, that's all I got. So this is when you go ahead and you subscribe to my channel because I think I might be perfect in every way and can do no wrong. Subscribe to my channel and then you need to go ahead and leave a comment.

Now I do like the comments. Some of the comments are funny, especially when people get in their feelings. I'm just like, they for support this panel. I'm like, I, I can't dedicate, hold on a second to this. but I, I do appreciate the comments. Okay, I, think I'm gonna come up with a couple of other con conversation topics and hopefully it has nothing to do with stop being, this rain needs to really stop it. It's so ignorant right now. I should have been at work and here I am. I'm doing 37 miles an hour. So annoying.

all right, I'm gonna hang up.