I can't exactly remember how it happened but at some point during undergrad studies I realized I was obsessed with windmills. The big ones, that make electricity. It makes sense because I've always been fascinated with electricity and technology. Also, cars. Maybe I should talk about that part first; It feels like wheels were my always passion. There was a time in my life when I was absolutely certain I would become a very successful race car driver, the victories of which I would often recreate with my bike. Ironically I don't recall having even seen a car in the act of racing until NASCAR took off in the 90s so I'm not sure how I reached such definite conclusions race car drivers. But Detroit was surely the reason car culture was ingrained in my being; an endless parade of car shows, Autoramas and weekend car meets. The early teen years were spent disassembling (and almost always destroying) anything I could get my hands on and girls were fairly uninteresting and thought I never lost faith in the religion of cars, I stopped thinking of myself as a yet-to-be-racer. Books and aptitude tests, marching band (yes, marching band) and the ubiquitous high school “hanging out” came to the forefront. Plus it seemed I would never escape the hand-me-down Dodge Dynasty of my automotive youth. I had to think of the future (they said) and my older brother was an electrician who he seemed to know everything about the limited technical problems I came across in family garage. So probably around that time I decided I too would know about electricity, like my brother.
Of course it never occurred to me that I might not go to college; We were middle class suburbanites and college was what we did after high school. It scares me to realize how narrow my sights were when I was 17, when I went to college and checked the "electrical engineering" box. Soon I was sinking in the sea of theory, feeling far away from the hands-on world I wanted. When was I going to learn something? College was, of course, full of distractions but during those few sober moments I fantasized about transferring into a technology degree or switching majors... Something more “real.” I pushed forward because I feared facing the world without a degree, imaging a direct link between it and success. I found my joy in other projects, like an ill-fated stint with the solar car team, time spent maintaining the consummate Cadillac (blue neons before neons were cool?) or shooting Crazy Curtis' gun collection.
Time passed, as it does, and I found a groove. My last semester in college was a good time; I was happier than I had ever been, I think. Also I had found photography, a hobby-turned-job and I'm still a little shocked they paid me to do it. But graduation and change were skulking about and my brain was preparing itself for deep thinking, which is about the time sustainable energy took a strong root in my being. It was like a beat in the background of my thinking melody... Some combination of youth-inspired idealism and clinical analysis of the facts deduced that burning oil (a key component in, oh, EVERYTHING we make) was stupid. And maybe because I lived in a snowy, wind-washed tundra, it seemed obvious that giant windmills were the answer to everything.
(Remember that in the late 90's, alternative energy wasn't cool and GM was still selling the EV-1. There was no Green-themed anything. I'm not trying to say that I was ahead of the curve, just that these were logical conclusions arrived at from simple observations of the world.)The problem was photo journalism- I was enjoying this work immensely and it had become the possibility of a career. I had made connections in the area and was offered a newspaper job after graduation with the promise of a quick promotion thereafter. Here, now, was the pondering my brain had prepared for. Should I continue down the delightful but staving-artist path of photography, or was I to make a career of engineering and the four years of meaningless equations? A battle of logic and deduction raged within and it led to many drunken conversations. One that sticks out in particular happened in a bar with an interpretive dancer /slash/ newspaper writer for whom i took pictures. This was now my fifth year at college and I was old enough to frequent the bars, but most of my live-in ultimate frisbee associates were not. So this was a rare moment, out with small group and I remember it as the first time I was able to fully pull together (in my mind) the reasons why I should be an engineer: Things were being done wrong and I had strong opinions about how they should be different. The interpretive dancer, (with whom I was fascinated... She was so different than anyone I had known in life or at this engineering college) was best at lending an ear and providing sandwiches after bar closing hours. Maybe she realized I had to sort these details out for myself, rather than offer opinions of her own. Later she moved to Canada.
The counter argument came not from within but during more sober conversations with my photography professor,
Mike Shupe (Who I tried calling
Coach Shoop in reference to the hilarious 80's movie that he hadn't seen, and as such couldn't recognize the brilliance in the name.) Mike would argue that one didn't have to build the system to make the change, but rather a powerful influence came with the photographer who could draw attention to the issues with inspired work. This was a good argument too.
The decision warrants so much more but it was made and I returned to Detroit to be an engineer. I would never admit it then but I'm sure now that I hadn't fully undone the brainwashing of a high school honors program and I suppose that I was always going to move forward with engineering. Either way, this was a hard time and a stark contrast to college. So much so that I had to coin the phrase "The Struggle" to summarize what we were up against. There was a group of us, friends from high school, reunited in a similar situation. I burned easily through graduation money and had a string of short-term minimum wage jobs. There was no Eureka! moment that we all expected and no $60k/yr job befell any of us. I did eventually meet a rare, worthwhile girl an soon after that (maybe because of that) I made it out of my parent's house for the last time. Eventually I had steady work, health insurance and in a bizarre twist of fate would occasionally find myself on job sites with my brother; He was a foreman now and I was doing low voltage fire alarm work. I was happy again but hadn't lost the nagging feeling of missed potential. It had been over a year since I graduated and I was *supposed* to be designing electric cars. I was supposed to be an engineer.
(It was a full three years after returning to Detroit that fortune turned and I landed an interview with Chrysler. I can't recall much from those years living in The Struggle and I think it reflects a painful lack of direction. I've always created a certain open-ended lifestyle but this was a time devoid of goals, short term and long. Sadly I couldn't move forward mentally until I had found a “worth while” job, the search for which had become my white whale. That was a serious period of listlessness and I look back on it as lost time for living. Those years could warrant several additional pages of retelling.I had a lot of failed interviews for engineering jobs but was learning both how to navigate the corporate interview dance, as well as keep my expectations in check. We had a saying back then, "Never, ever expect anything good to happen. Ever." But this was a rare opportunity. I drove there in my work van, wearing a work uniform and in the parking lot climbed into the windowless back and donned my suit. What followed was several months of follow up interviews, missed jobs and recommendations from one position to another. Its amazing to look back and remember the anticipation desperate want that I would push from my thoughts everyday. I had approximately zero applicable experience and the market was full of engineers but somehow I ended up landing the third Chrysler engineering job for which I interviewed (
again, so much more to be told...). I was now a Battery Engineer for Chrysler. A man named Chris Saari gave me the opportunity that would be the defining moment in my professional life; a middle manager at a failing automotive company who hated his job. I was an engineer making cars.
(If you don't love cars and you don't care about being in the center of the universe then I cannot explain to you what it is like to work for the Big Three. I imagine its like what others feel working in the pits on Wall Street or maybe like being in the White House? The design studios, enormous test labs, cars and engines and parts everywhere, on every engineer's desk. Chrysler in 2005 was not a particularly exceptional company as far as car makers went but to me it was amazing. Here was the corporate headquarters and I felt like I was in the middle of something amazing.)The job was of course not nearly as special or rewarding as I imagined it to be. I enjoyed the rare opportunity to split my time between a desk (I had my own desk?!) the plants that built the cars, the corporate headquarters, the supplier's engineering offices and the battery lab. I also jumped on the chance to take part in the corporate-offered "continuing education." One such class was dedicated to the electric vehicle endeavors at Chrysler; a way to introduce employees (those that cared) to the advanced tech that was being developed deep in the skunk-works of the building. That's when I first learned about the
F-cell and when chatting up one of the car's engineers, about the Alternative Energy program downtown at Wayne State in Detroit. It hit me like a lightening bolt! I had forgotten my plan of making things that made a difference and I needed to move forward again. What was i doing tracking quality issues with the same lead acid batteries they've been making for 30 years?
I enrolled in the AET (Alternative Energy Technology) program at Wayne State University, really the only such program in the country. I studied fuel cells and windmills, Fluid dynamics and hydrogen infrastructure. This was what I was supposed to be doing, But more importantly I was now an experiences engineer AND a study of advanced technology. Armed with a sufficiently padded resume I set out for a real "alternative energy" job. I had no idea, no foresight to see that I already had a pocket ace to play for the rest of my career: Batteries.
As it would happen, I found myself in Detroit in the beginning of the vehicular electrification revolution. Every manufacturer wanted electric hybrids and that technology required battery experts. I wasn't an advanced battery technology expert but I had enough experience to get me into North America's only manufacturer of NiMH automotive propulsion batteries. As shocked as I was to be hired at Chrysler, it was even more unlikely that I would get this new job and I don't think I appreciated that fact at the time. Chrysler was not exactly a lucrative job, as I was contract and paid hourly. I don't think I'll ever forget the negotiation I had with the recruiter who landed me the interview with the battery company. Asked how much money I would require, and knowing I should always ask for a healthy raise from my current rate, I quote him a number. Re reflected for a moment and countered “I'm going to ask for $10k/yr more.” and that's what they agreed to pay me. I missed the opportunity to touch the new cars as they rolled down the line or sit in on the meetings the literally created the cars of the future, but I had finally achieved the goal I had set so many years ago. I was designing battery packs that would drive hybrid vehicles; one of maybe a couple hundred engineers in the nation doing such work. This was career end game and I was happy. The happiest I had been since snapping pictures for a living. I even started building my a race car.
Of course change is constant and the company never reached full potential. Eventually it would go the way of most tech companies with lay offs, money shortages and job uncertainty while I grew anxious with my own uncertainties. My accumulated knowledge wasn't strong enough to take me further into the real engineering work, unless I wanted to pull part numbers and file TPS reports. The a for mentioned go at grad school fell short and when the technical side of that fancy new degree program was found to be lacking, shored up with the hypothetical and buzz-word heavy resume fodder that it offered.
(I ended with a 16 credit “graduate certificate,” or what I like to call “the associated degree of grad school.) More, batteries it seemed, were the game of a chemistry man and electrical engineers would always be relegated to wire harnesses, HV relays and test equipment. But I had been in the world of electric propulsion for two years and I knew the future of Alt. Energy was power electronics. I'd seen it done and I learned about it from the coworker who had taught me so much about REAL engineering; a man with a seemingly limitless source of energy and who made me realize that there is a distinctly unique kind of person who can design anything, build everything and has the follow through to see completion. He inspired me to reproduce that fortitude in myself, even if it didn't come naturally. I still wanted to make electric cars but it was time for a new path.
I should mention I have observed a consistent and reliable occurrence that in times of discontent or great upheaval, I will somehow and without understanding stumble into the greatest possible of outcomes. It had been nearly a decade since I returned to Detroit and this good luck would come into play again. The battery job was shaky and I was in the “its complicated” phase of relationship, when the familiar but rare and fleeting alignment of worlds occurred. There was another amazing girl and a school that offered a not-at-all-common power electronics degree, plus the possibility of transferring my job to the state that owned the two. This was a more complicated cosmic negotiation and it did not exactly fall into place but I gave an ultimatum or two and proceeded as if all would be splendid. And 4 weeks later I was in OH, living with the girl and studying power electronics.
Graduate school, it turns out, can be challenging; demanding an unsustainable lifestyle. I find myself in the midst of my grandest leap of blind faith, not realizing how much I would give up until it was already gone. Even as I write this I should be documenting tremendous previous work; a battery powered welder and a masters thesis project. A culmination of experience and learning that brings with it a huge sense of reward and achievement, reminiscent of those first days at Chrysler. Or perhaps when I returned to the Detroit Auto show as an adult so many years later, to see my battery in that year's electric hyrbid. But right now I feel drained and anxious and there is so much work to be done. The final scenes in this transitional period, greater than those before and as such, so much more demanding. My vision of the future is fuzzy; unclear as it always is before the next great adventure.
(
If I poured through the Robot Exterminator archives I know I could find previously told portions of this story. As I approach graduation and another relocation I can't help revisiting this strange path and again find myself inspired to tell the story, for my own sake, through the filter of my ever-changing perspective.)
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These are the good old day
~this girl I know
