Work smarter, not harder

There are times we all just want to get over with a task, which we know we will repeat, but still, prefer to do it the long way just to get the results. Below is one of my favourite pictures on this topic. It is clear that if we stop for a second, look back, and observe the situation, we can find an easier way to proceed further which we can re-use.

In the previous weeks, I conducted some experiments and was very excited to see the results and compare them with some examples in literature. The easiest way was to copy the results, paste them into excel and plot a graph of my interest. I filtered and worked on the data like this for almost 4 weeks. During these 4 weeks, every time I had to change or check something, I needed to open each excel, and remember the exact things I needed to conduct. Even though the latest version of excel and new computers are capable enough to handle thousands of lines of data, it was freezing very often that I had to close the task or give it some time to recover.

Last weekend, I was just very exhausted from going back and forth in different sheets (at home I do not have a second screen) so I decided to take the time to just write a Matlab code. I worked with Matlab for many years (in the following posts I will write about my weird relationship with Matlab) and knew that I could do what I wanted to do with some effort and few google pages. One other thing great about Matlab is that you get a free version if you are a student, and there are thousands of things that can be done with it.

It took me less than half an hour to write the code, import data, plot and filter. Yes, 30 minutes vs probably 6-8 hours (in total with re-plotting filtering, selecting relevant data etc). This was a great way to prove that I should just think about what would be the most efficient way, each time I have something to do.

What are your smarter ways to work more efficiently?

Is research background necessary?

We come across tons of success stories every day. The old school ones were lucky enough just to graduate from bachelor's and land their dream jobs in which they spent decades. For younger ones, it is kind of struggle to find what to do for a lifetime career since there are too many things to choose from. I can see my classmates from university and grad school switching jobs very often.

All over the world, the age to start University or College is around 18-19. At that age, we all just want to have fun and don't really care about what real life will be. On one side, it is very cruelly to put so much responsibility on one's shoulder at a very young age, on the other side, after years of changes in education systems, apparently, this is the best way for higher education.

Most of the Universities don't require their Bachelor students to be involved in the research. Only the top students are given a chance to study further and go into good research institutes and learn how to research.

As an active student, being in only top 10 in class and having chance to do research at a very early age due to my language skills, I highly believe everyone should be given a chance to discover that special way of working. It is still not required in most fields to know how to research, however, a researchers way of thinking should be crucial for critical and creative thinking.

5 Major Differences between Industry and Academia Job

After all you can see easily how much I like being in academia and industry and do not like feeling stuck in both time to time. In previous posts, I always tried to mention my point of view on this. As being super close to both, I felt like this had to be said;

- Yes it is rude, however, in academia you are surrounded by co-workers who have similar academic level of education which makes it a little easier to communicate with them. However, in an industry job you could be working with an engineer who graduated 30 years ago and doesn't care about today's technology. This will definitely something to remember.

- In research your main goal is to develop something that hasn't been done/published before, however in industry it all comes down to cost. And guess what, repeated solutions are appreciated because they are cheap and fat.

- In industry it is very rare to be able to measure your success level in terms of numbers however, in academia scientists found many ways of measuring their outcomes in numbers.

- In an industry job, you have to have an outcome at the end of the day, in academia finding out a way doesn't work sometimes counts as an outcome.

- Repeating and mastering some habits are key to fast and reliable success in an industry job, in academia you constantly have to renew your skills depending on your project or trend.

Structuring a day on a long period time off

I am at a very special phase in my life. I recently married and moving on to a new life soon. I quit my full time job 2 months ago and working freelance for same company. I quit job to have sometime for myself and complete the paper work and necessary steps before I move on to my new life. I roughly counted how long I have until I can start a new job and it looks like I have 60 days to move to my new home and another 90 days until I can start working, which adds up to 150 days approximately. During this time line there are a few things I want to accomplish since I have plenty of time and not sure when I will be such free ever again. From today onward here is how I will be structuring my week day.

- 1 hour studying for a test I like to take for my career - personal goal
- 1 hour working on scientific papers - I have 3 lined up and I would like to submit them all before I start with full time job
- 1 hour for PhD and job applications - this usually takes a lot less but I would like to include writing a proposal and sometime to think about cover letters
- 1 hour of walking - it is very easy to stay in because of laziness
- Keeping track of my days
- Motivate myself - having plenty of time can lead to feeling useless so even if it is a few minutes, I'd like to think about how far I've come.
- Last but not least work for my freelance job - there are days I have to work 8 hours and there are days I do not work at all so this point is unlimited

The reason I wanted to make a simple TO-DO list without tiring and bother myself much is because I believe most precious thing we have is time and unfortunately we cannot store it or go back in time.

Volunteering in a conference in your undergrad

I remember my freshman (1st) year in bachelors. All we cared about was passing the classes and enjoying free lessons. None of us had what to do after school, and none of us cared either since we had more than 3 years.

On my sophomore (2nd) year, I was going through some family financial problems which lead me to take charge of my life and start earning. At that time, and after having a terrible site summer internship, I thought going into academia was easiest and best path for me.

My passion and hard work helped me get a position and research funding. Beside my research work my advisor encouraged me to volunteer in 1 national and 1 international conference. Here is how my experience went;

1. In the international conference, I met a professor who then became part of my MSc committee in Texas A&M.

2. All faculty from my school recognized me and I built my very first academic network. This network later helped me getting references and getting paper work done easily. Besides that, every time something national or international was going on, I was one of the first students they called to.

3. During the national conference I met many recognized researchers, and one ended up being coworker of my dad from the 90's. You can guess how it helped me stand out in crowd.

4. I learned the research technical slang before even getting bachelors degree.

5. The vision and mission of the conferences motivated me to move forward in hard time in academia.

6. Never paid to attend those conferences and during technical sessions, I could attend the ones I like.

7. Got the goodies bag along with published papers.

These being said, I highly recommend every undergraduate student to take part in such conferences. I believe all academics and graduate students should help young researchers get involved as soon as possible. I think this is the strongest way to get students get involved in research.

Gym Visits 3 Times a Week as an Office Employer

I am an engineer and I chose to work at an office. This literally means, sitting 8 hours a day. We all know how dangerous it is to sit for a very long time. We all know it is the new smoking. There are some solutions like stand-up desks or replacing office chairs with pilates balls. Lets come to the reality. How many of offices actually support those? Even if they do, most of us feel very embarrased to use those. Short term effects of "sitting too long" starts with back and body pains. We try to increase blood circulation outside work hours.

I wanted to get a gym membership this year to get in shape for my wedding and also to lose the 10kgs I still have from the time of my master's degree from Texas (yes, everything was big there and I never regret it).

Here's is what happened after I started going to the gym;

1. I no longer have back pain

I mainly do cardios and it is enough to sweat off the "poison". I believe this is one of my biggest gain because I suffer a lot from back pain.

2. I feel happy

Not only because of the increase of endorphine, but knowing that I did something for myself made me a better person.

3. Reduced stress

No matter how easy life is for you, we all have stress on daily basis with different intensity. After a tough day, tiring my body makes me a better person and I have good energy for the loved ones at home.

Whatever it is you like to do, just set a side 3-4 hours a week for yourself and you will see your life changing in every way.

Things to Avoid on your Linkedin Profile

Linkedin is one of my favorite so called "social media". I love the idea of following professionals that are inspiring without even knowing them. It is awesome how we can learn so much from them without knowing anything about their social life. I am using Linkedin actively and here is a few thing I don't really like;

1. Summary

It is great if you have a personal summary, it lets people have a general idea of who you are and what are you up to. If you mention that anyone should feel free to contact on your summary (of course for professional reasons) and you end up never replying, thats not nice.

2. Using it like other social media

There are a few people I added because few of the information that showed up on my home page was amazing. After networking with such person, I realized that they are posting every hour or so about their personal things which has no relation to their field of profession. I unfortunately ended up unfollowing them. We all get enough of that in Facebook or Instagram.

3. Link your profile to other social media

This is one thing I totally don't understand and will appreciate if anyone has logical explaination. You can be perfect in your field, you can be a great influence but why would anyone want to add you on other social media platforms? If you need another place to present your work, ideas etc open a blog page or even a website. This will sure make it more professional and reliable and you will be saving your social identity.

Don't get me wrong, I am not an expert on how social media should be used but I am against misusing it.

Why Attend AISC Conference when you are a Civil Engineering Student?

As I have mentioned before, maybe a couple of times, I wanted to build my professional career as a structural engineer on steel structures. It didn't go how I wanted it to be, which is not too bad when I look at it now.

One of the smartest things I believe I didn when I was a student at Texas A&M University was to attend AISC - Steel Conference. It is free of charge for students, and besides that they also have a maximum reimbursement up to $175. With student registration, you can attend the entire program. One very special thing for students is that there is a day set only for students. In morning session, experienced professionals give presentations and in afternoon session you get to connect with professionals in industry. This way I made many connections in industry and even had couple of interview.

The way it differs from University Career Fair is they are not necessarily hiring. They literally have a cup of coffee and hanging around to meet new generation of structural engineers. With simple research on companies and maybe on their job openings, you may land a job of your dreams and grow your professional network.

This year, it will take place in Baltimore, Maryland between 11-13 April, 2018. Don't forget to take a few copies of resumes and business cards. I attended this event in 2015 and 2016 and both were great experiences and I highly recommend it to anyone.

I turned my work e-mail notification off for two weeks and here is what happened

I started my professional career as a workaholic. My first few weeks I was very motivated and satisfied with work and environmental conditions. I was working long hours during the week and I would even go to work a few hours on Saturdays. As a new graduate I didn’t have too much responsibility but whatever I was given, I tried to do my best and work my way through. After I a month I was given responsibility of coordination between the firm in USA we are working for and internal coordination. I was doing my best passing on information to right group of people at the right time. I added the email to my phone, had the notification on.

One disadvantage of working with a firm across the ocean is time difference. They would send an email during their work day and it would be midnight in our time zone. And I learnt this the hard way, no, not all emails are nice. Sometimes they would send you an email that would really give you trouble. I did lose few nights of sleep because of that. After I decided to quit that firm, I deleted my e-mail account from my phone and didn’t care about anything after work hours or during the weekend.

I started working with similar excitement in my current firm. The e-mail traffic is not too bad however, internal emails can be a little too much sometimes. I decided to turn off emails from my phone and turn off the notification from my computer. Guess what, it was a smart decision after all. Sometimes if I concentrate on a task, I don’t even check my emails for couple of hours. I strongly believe emails are not for urgent tasks. Everyone I work closely with has my phone number. Instead of writing an email they can just ring me and check how I am doing.

As a conclusion, it is one of the smartest decisions I ever took. This helps me keep my concentration high when I am working on a complicated task and I don’t ruin my personal time by worrying about something I cannot control at that point.

Why would be industry be VS academia

Even though I have been using the term industry vs academia in my daily life before blogging, lately I started thinking that I may be overlooking at something. Seriously, why would be industry be against academia? If there was no success in academia once upon a time (maybe it wasn't called academia or research and it was just essential for life) there would be no technology. Even today, almost every single successful research invention is converted into an industry business.

I graduated from my masters degree exactly a year ago and because of unexpected situations I went to an industry job. Not only I got the job because I had research experience, also the skills from academia helped me successfully complete my day to day tasks which most of the time included finding 1 sentence of information in a 500+ page codes.

For sometime now I am looking how the PhD hiring process is going in Europe. Speaking for civil engineering, I am very disappointed to see there are almost no fully-paid positions. This makes me think of 3 things:

1. Do we know everything we need to know?

I am not a professor or an expert but I can speak about a few very important gaps in civil engineering. In 21st century we should be putting more effort into development of technology than being satisfied with what we have.

2. Do we have too many PhDs that are unemployed?

PhDs who graduated sometime between 2000-2006 have good academic positions. Assuming someone gets their PhD at 30, this scholar might work in same institute for almost 30 years until retirement. So what is seriously happening to all PhDs that are graduating now?

3. Why does industry companies think PhDs are expensive?

This also includes the idea that PhDs are overqualified for industry jobs. Ofcourse someone straight out from bachelors will be a lot cheaper to hire if you are only looking into industry experience. However, a candidate with masters and PhD has developed many skills overtime that most of the industry worker will not be able to develop in 5-6 years.

So I am sitting here, having an industry job with the dream of getting into a PhD and applying all I know into civil industry.

Let me know what you think of such situation? Is it worth going to research based degrees? Or shall we just be satisfied with what we have?

10 Things to Avoid at Your Very First Job

10 THINGS TO AVOID AT YOUR VERY FIRST JOB

I manage to stay in my first industry job only 8 months. Don't get me wrong, I didn't get fired or had a very bad experience, instead I made all the mistakes below and my colleagues with no self-respect used each one of those against me. I quit my job for good, I learned very valuable practice lessons as well. I promised myself not to make the below mistakes. If you're getting ready for your first job, here are a few advise learned the hard way.

1. Don't be afraid to ask

The question can be as simple as "can you help me connect to the printer" or as something more complicated as "how can I access previous reports for such client". It doesn't feel good when you have to ask 10 questions a day to one specific person because you might feel like you're interrupting them, however, that is the only way you'll overcome those problems.

2. There is no such thing as it is a "false" because you are not experienced. Everyone was at that point once in time

I mentioned "I have no experience" every time I didn't know an answer to a specific question. A few months later when I was able to give right answers, colleagues working under my authority questioned it. The right answer for something you don't know could be "let me look it up to be sure" and if you need go speak about it with someone who can potentially answer or guide you to find an answer.

3. Feel free to speak with your manager / boss on positive and negative things

I was pretty unlucky on this one because my boss was my manager and my senior engineer. I had to be very careful what I tell him because I wasn't sure if the answer would come from my boss, manager or senior engineer. However, I do regret not letting him know how I feel.

4. If you're assigned a work that you cannot over come, try to take it as far as possible and let your senior know what knowledge you need to move forward

When I look back now, I know they were not expecting my to do everything that I eventually figured out how to do. I would stress myself over something that sometimes I didn't even think if I had all the data necessary to move forward. Best way to overcome this is by using previous projects, it can at least give you an idea of where to loop up.

5. Reflect your personality - directly

You're older than 21 years old by the time graduate from basic university degree. We all have positive and negative properties and no one will and no right to judge you over it. If you have that one skill that will move the project forward, don't wait and just take action. It might feel like it will look bad since you are there for a limited time but at the end of the day what matters is if the work is done.

6. Know exactly what they are expecting from you

Yes, you'll read the job description and have an overall idea of what they can expect from you. On the other side you might have to do things that are not directly related to your qualifications. This can be as simple as putting files from all departments together. Make sure to know as much as details as possible.

7. There will be longer days, don't let stress take over your life quality and your health

I am a daughter of a workaholic - who would work 24 hours straight if needed. One piece of advise from him was to work until your job for the day is done. One thing he never told me, maybe he doesn't know, was to know your limits. If you need to work late, of course do. But if you are working late because someone cannot do their job right make it very clear that it is not your job scope.

8. If you really need to take a few days off, don't wait until you are sick. Speak with whoever is in charge, there should be ways around it

This is not something I can do until I feel comfortable with the company and people around. However there are days you just don't want to leave the bed. Sometimes even a couple of hours off on a work day can help you re-fuel and feel a lot better. Make sure to let someone know.

9. Don't get into any agreement that will limit your freedom to leave the company

I always prefer unlimited time agreements. You never know what will bring. You may not like the company, job or simply the people around you. Or all of a sudden something great happens in your personal life and you have to leave the city or country for something better for you. It is also very common for a company to ask you to sign a contract because they paid for you business trip or funded your certification. At this point it is up to you to decide. Even though I didn't have to make a decision on such a topic I would probably prefer "to pay back for X work Y years or pay Z amount". It still limits the freedom up to some extend but still gives you a chance in case things don't work out.

10. Don't take it emotional - Almost no one retires from the company they first worked for

It is your very first job. I was so damn excited because this company invested time and money into me. My first few months I couldn't even think about I can quit this company because I believed they put so much faith me. Yes, they hired you because they thought your skills would help however, every single person in industry can be replaced. Don't think about this the bad way. If you're not happy or satisfied with the conditions you have the right to move on. Like you can find a new job, they can find a new employer.

Don't lose you hope until you find the reason you are born

Even though I was planning to post on something totally different today, I came across a TEDx talk that changed the way I was feeling.

I started my new job 3 weeks ago and after working a week I had to take a week off because I was feeling really sick (I don’t remember taking a week off because I was so sick). Even technically this past week was my 3^rd week, it was actually my 2^nd week of work and I was stressed about the kind of reputation I gave them just in the beginning of my career at this company. Besides being stressed because I missed a lot on an urgent project, the project was rejected by the contractor and we had to go through pages of corrections and change our design. This meant more stress, more effort and more time to put into reading the specifications.

Aside of my full-time industry job I am a part-time researcher. For a few days now I am very confused about how much research I can actually get done while dealing with my full time job. Also as my blog makes it very clear, I am thinking if I am an industry person or academia person, like everyday almost.

To escape from this mode I typed inspiring talks and here is the first video that came up and I decided to give it a chance. After listening to it, I of course felt better. Please take 15 minutes to watch the video if you haven’t and keep trying to find the reason you were born.

Use night light

Today I will speak about something I discovered recently, yes no one ever told me well better late than never. And it is night light on electronic devices. I use my phone and laptop very frequently after 8 pm until I get into bed. Even though it takes me very short time to fall asleep most of the time, I felt like it's been decreasing my sleep quality and I could feel my eye lids hurting while falling asleep.

It was a coincidence that I tried it on my laptop. It gives the screen brownish color that kind of looks like an old book page. After looking at it a few minutes and switching back to normal makes a huge difference on your eyes. Since the day I discovered this, I have night light 8 pm to 7 am.

Using electronics is sometimes for relaxation or to catch up but there are so many hours we are depending on them, and if there is a way to look at a screen and get the less pain as possible. Even though it probably has no less affect on radiation at least your eyes won't hurt such much.

After a few weeks of using and enjoying it, I realized that I really need this property on my phone which I check last thing at night and first thing in the morning (most of the time). This is probably one of the worse habits I have but looking for ways to get over it. Again by coincidence I accidentally hit the night light mode on my phone (speak about keeping up with technology). For those of you who are in engineering field, it is like using AutoCAD with dark/black background.

Long story short, if you are like me and never noticed this option, give it a try. I promise, you wont regret it. Just one thing to add before I finish, I am not sure how it is on every laptop and if the quality is better at some resolutions.

Importance of Reading in Research

This is one of my favorite topics to speak about also in my personal life. I was raised by parents who were reading on daily basis. One thing they couldn't get me to do as a hobby was reading. Yes, I hated reading when I was a child. When I look back now, I am guessing it could be hidden dyslexia I have (not proved). Both of my parents were really worried and hardly believed that I wouldn't be successful at school. After completing 5th grade in Turkey and moving to Abu Dhabi (because of my dads work), and staring at The Cambridge High School I had better answers for myself. I didn't speak much English when I first started grade 6 and I could barely communicate with anyone or catch up with classes. One day one of our teachers were absent and the history teacher covered up for the math class. He was asking random math questions and even with my limited English, I was the only one who answered all of the questions. That day I realized that numbers were international and you could communicate with anyone using numbers. After that day I was so sure it wasn't the letters that was going to save my life. I only read when I really had to and if there was a very interesting reading book my best friends would recommend a couple of times.

Due to my interest in math and science I never had too much reading. It was manageable until I started my masters and decided to go for the thesis option. First thing my advisor wanted was start looking for papers that had the key words of my interest. The second step was to find lack of information in such topic. This exactly meant read anything you find and process the information and decide if it would be useful for my research. I spent 12-15 months of my masters period just reading and trying to sort out the right information. For me that was the most painful part of research until I came to a point where I sat down and wrote my 150 pages of thesis in less than a month with very minor corrections.

Now I am 25 with masters degree and guess what, if it is not interesting (research related or a reading book) I would just read 10 pages and never touch that book again. Using fast reading techniques and skipping unrelated part of papers (to my research), I am trying to keep the habit of reading as much as possible. Another very important point is, to be a good research writer, knowledge on such topic is very important and only way to get there is to know every tiny bit of research and to site the right information at the right point.

Why you should have a LinkedIn profile?

https://erinewart.com/2017/02/16/linkedin-update-3-things-you-need-to-know/

    This topic may sound like a cliche since there has been a lot of writing on this topic. In this post I'd like to write about my first hand experience which affected my academic and industrial career. Like everyone my age I do own an account in every social media platform. Out of curiosity I opened my LinkedIn account during my junior year internship. I could add a few people from the office which is a pretty good start. LinkedIn didn't catch my attention back in 2013 when I was only in bachelors and my network was very small. I kept checking it in every few weeks to try to get used to the website.

During my masters in Texas A&M University, getting involved in research and attending conferences helped me grow my network. I attended AISC Conference in 2015 as a student and during their Direct Connect session I had chance to interfere with many PEs from best structural engineering firms. Having hand full of business cards at the end of the day was hard to manage. Also during the session I am sure each engineer handed 30-50 business cards to each student they interacted. I had to stand out and put a picture on their mind so they will not remember me. Adding them on Linkedin and sending a "Thank you" note I believe was a positive thing to remember for them as well and some even invited me to their office. During my job search and every time I needed advise from someone in industry I had contact with many engineers even if they had switched jobs or didn't want to answer an e-mail of someone they didn't even remember.

Last year when I decided to go to full-time industry job, I came across a job posting and immediately added the person. He was the boss of the company he is hiring and he had PhD! Seriously, after all the confusion about academia vs industry I was having those days, finding a potential employer with such a profile really motivated me. They wanted to hire someone with min 5 years of experience however, my self confidence and achievements convinced him that having a new graduate with international experience wouldn't be a bad idea. Long story short, I was hired within 2 weeks after I contacted my boss.

In today's society we are stuck between having many opportunities and very few contacts. Networking through professional websites is a must to be able to know whats going on and to open up a door of a maybe a dream opportunity.

Why did I even become a blogger?

http://thegradstudentway.com/blog/?p=1985#.WdRzcGhSxPY

We all have that dream of writing down everything we go through, inspire someone and even become an influencer. There are the ones that go against everything just to accomplish their goals and there are others. I have had everything I wanted for which I've worked so hard. For the past couple of years, I am finding excuses that stop me reaching the point I want to end up. A couple of days ago I came across a quote on LinkedIn and I decided to take back the control of my life before life takes control over my goals. The quote said “Don’t work 8 hours for a company then go home and not work on your own goals. You’re not tired, you’re uninspired.” Tell me if you can relate.

I’ve been keeping a diary since I can’t even remember when. I always wanted to write a blog on weekly bases but never knew where to start and what it really should be about. Who would really care about my travel adventures (in today’s society we all have bunch of them), my fitness goals or how I am stuck between my career in academia vs my career in industry. A few weeks ago I found a blog of someone that really inspires me and found out that actually every little thing that seems unimportant is somehow related to my bigger goal yes even my cheap hostel adventure.

On this blog I will be writing about a question that has been bothering me for the past few years now. I knew what to do when I obtained my BSc in Civil Engineering. I was selected for Fulbright Fellowship and was starting in a TOP 10 university straight out of bachelors. As I started getting down the road of being a professional in the field of structural engineering, I had to make a decision of what my next step would be. There is a big world called civil industry and it looks endless at least for the next couple of decades. And there is a not so popular road called academia and you are only expected to end there if you like working independent and don’t really want to interfere with the real world problems. Even though somehow I can relate to both I am not very sure which one I would fit better. A few of my classmates think that I am super lucky because I can do great in both, however, I sometimes do prefer that I could only do one and be consistant in that. Here is my adventure getting through the struggle. I hope it encourages you on your own journey.