The Path Well Traveled

Unlike Robert Frost, I took the path most traveled.

Since the beginning, I took a path forward that appealed to my interests, a path that satisfied my curiosity, and a path that was easy given my talents.

As a boy, I took apart toys, figured how they worked and put them back together. A top was magic. A camera was a wonder. As a young man, I brought home every piece of junk piled on the street. I tinkered with cars before I could drive 'em. My bolt-action .22 was interesting but a semiauto gun was a marvel. I wondered why the doctors did not just coat my grandmother's bone joints with Teflon to reduce friction and improve action and I was fascinated with the concept of the human body as a bio machine of bones and muscles as levers and actuators. This all came easy for me because it fascinated me. An engineer was the easy way forward, and one that appeared to be the well-traveled path.

At school I had A's in "interesting stuff" and B's in the required humanities (who cared for a topic so subjective that it had no wrong answer?). For my BS I took every course offered in electronics and computers, resulting in a double major. For my MS I completed the required PhD courseload and I wrote a kickass thesis that was used as teaching material at UCLA. I continued towards a PhD and took every course in electrical engineering except electronics (done that for the BS) and many in other disciplines. I was just taking was what interesting and thus easy.

In the sixth grade, Robert Frost's poem intrigued me... why didn't he check out ALL the paths?

I took the course most traveled, I contributed, and made a difference. I am the better for it.


- © 2009 by Willy