Being an Engineer
Being an Engineer
S6E31 Camden Shuman | Building a Second Brain, Co-ops, & Tools for Developing Your Network
In this episode, Camden Shuman discusses his experiences as a co-op student at Siemens Healthineers, where he has gained valuable hands-on experience in mechanical design work. He also shares insights about his entrepreneurial venture, "The Engineering Way" newsletter, which aims to help engineering students and professionals develop their soft skills and network.
Main Topics:
- Engineering education and the challenges of transitioning from high school to college
- The difference between internships and co-ops, and the benefits of gaining real-world experience
- Camden's work at Siemens Healthineers, including his projects in mechanical design and use of CAD software
- The creation and growth of "The Engineering Way" newsletter, including marketing strategies and the importance of providing value to the community
- Time management techniques, such as using calendars, lists, and the concept of "building a second brain"
- Advice for engineering students interested in entrepreneurship and building their professional network
About the guest: Camden Shuman is a senior in Mechanical Engineering at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. Camden has gained real world engineering experience through his co-op at Siemens Healthineers, working on pioneering molecular imaging technologies. He is also the founder of “The Engineering Way,” a newsletter dedicated to providing valuable tips and advice to engineering students and professionals. Camden's achievements include winning third place in the Vol Court pitch competition and contributing to innovative projects in medical technology and drone applications.
Links:
Camden Shuman - LinkedIn
The Engineering Way
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About Being An Engineer
The Being An Engineer podcast is a repository for industry knowledge and a tool through which engineers learn about and connect with relevant companies, technologies, people resources, and opportunities. We feature successful mechanical engineers and interview engineers who are passionate about their work and who made a great impact on the engineering community.
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Work on something that you're interested in, do something that will show your interest in engineering and also can help other people.
Aaron Moncur:Hello and welcome to the being an engineer podcast today, we are thrilled to have Camden Schumann on the show, a senior in mechanical engineering at the University of Tennessee Knoxville. Camden has gained real world experience through his Co Op at Siemens Healthineers, working on pioneering molecular imaging technologies. He is also the founder of the engineering way, a newsletter dedicated to providing valuable tips and advice to engineering students and professionals. Camden's achievements include winning third place in the vol court pitch competition and contributing to innovative projects in medical technology and drone applications. Camden, thank you so much for being with us on the show
Camden Shuman:today. Thank you so much. Aaron, that was a great intro. Thank you. You're welcome.
Aaron Moncur:You're welcome. So what made you decide to become an engineer?
Camden Shuman:Man, it goes way back all the way my family was living out in Montana. I was about four years old, and my parents found me, and they found me building a zip line. I had used a super hook, a tie down strap and connected it to the bottom of our garage door, raised up the garage door and then tied the other end to a car door mirror, and before I was allowed to ride it, they discovered me, unfortunately, and that's kind of how I got my
Aaron Moncur:start. That's great. I love it hands on. Experience building stuff. Very cool. Reminds me of this book called encyclopedia Brown. Did you ever read that when you were a kid? I haven't, I don't think so. No, I think it's pretty old school, yeah, like you're probably two generations removed from when it was popular. But this guy encyclopedia brand. He was real smart. He would like do stuff to make money all the time. He was a kid, and one of his adventures was building. It was like a roller coaster off the roof of his house, or something like that. Anyway, pretty cool. Yeah, those are fun books, so you have some hands on experience working at Siemens Healthineers. What are some of the projects that you've been working on there, actually, before we get to that. So you're, you're a student right now at at UT University of Tennessee, right? That's correct. What, what year are you? I
Camden Shuman:will be a senior in the fall. So we're getting down to the final stretch here. Just gotta, gotta push through and graduate.
Aaron Moncur:Yeah, wow. One more year, almost. Congratulations. Time. That's great. How, how has it been so far? I'll preface this by saying that I had a rough time in school. I thought it was school is I don't think I was made for school. It was, it was tough for me, and I didn't love it, if I'm being honest. But how has the engineering, formal education experience been for you,
Camden Shuman:I think, personally, it's been really challenging. I kind of went from coming out of high school pretty like, top of my class, I was the salutatorian. It's like, I got this engineering it can't be that much harder than this. And freshman year was a wake up call. You know, you start bombing a couple exams. You're like, all right, gotta, gotta kick it into next year. And luckily, my parents and grandparents from both sides have instilled like, a pretty hard work ethic in me, so I was able to kind of find that next year and kind of buckle down like, I'm here. I know I'm supposed to be doing this. I want to do this, and kind of took it to that next level, which I think you kind of have to do to be an engineer. I know there definitely are some people who are really gifted at it just naturally, but for most of us, you kind of have to just grind it out. And I feel like that's what I've been doing the last couple
Aaron Moncur:of years. Awesome. I love it. I was, I mean, hearing you talk makes me think back to when I was in college and chem 101, comes to mind, as far as, like, bombing tests and not doing so well. And then I had this one friend. He actually has been a guest on the show, a close friend of mine, Joel Williams, super smart guy. He would not study for a test, and just on a whim, walk by the testing center. Be like, I think I'll take it now and just walk in and ace it, you know. But those people are few and far between. I think the more common individuals probably we have a little bit of struggles, and we realize in college that, wow, engineering is more challenging than I thought it was going to be. So now you're you have this Co Op at Siemens Healthineers. First of all, I honestly don't know what the difference is between a co op in an internship. Is there, formally, a difference between those two things?
Camden Shuman:There is so an internship can be anything like, you know, a week to a couple weeks over the summer, and then a co op, as it's generally advertised, is something a little more long term, usually around two semesters, and sometimes you'll have multiple rotations of that Co Op. And it kind of depends on the company, whether you decide to do one rotation that could be anywhere from, you know, six months to nine months, or you could do multiple years of that. I know some people, they don't graduate. They kind of stretch out college to, like, six or seven years, because they've done so many, so many co ops, and got a lot of experience. Luckily, I haven't had to do that, because I was a little bit ahead. I had a I had a about a semester ahead, so I was able to structure my first Co Op term in a spring semester and a summer so I was able to just become right on track. So it ended up working out pretty well
Aaron Moncur:for me. Nice. Okay, cool. Now I know the difference between a co op and an internship is basically duration. Is what it sounds like. That's right. So for your co op, are you working full time, or is it like a part time thing?
Camden Shuman:So it's full time, 40 hours a week, and I think over the fall, go back to albeit part time, just because I want to finish it and graduate next spring. So that's, that's the plan for now, at least. But so far up to this point, it's been full time,
Aaron Moncur:okay? And while you're doing the Co Op, are you doing school also, or is it one or the other?
Camden Shuman:Generally, they encourage you to do one or the other, because most, most places want you to work 40 hours a week, and it's pretty rare to find someone a company that'll let you work part time. So I'm really grateful to Siemens Healthineers for allowing me to do that my managers and kind of working with you to get it to work out. So it's been a
Aaron Moncur:nice, nice, nice, anything you can share about with us, about projects that you're working on at Healthineers. Of course, we don't want to disclose anything confidential, but if there is anything that you can share that would be interesting, that would be cool to hear about,
Camden Shuman:sure. So kind of what I've focused on mainly is mechanical design work. So we use Siemens NX. Obviously, it's got Siemens in front of the name, so that is our CAD package of choice. So I've used that for many of my projects to design testing fixtures. So that's been a lot of fun. I've got to use different materials, like carbon fiber, HDPE, I've designed things in aluminum. It's been really fun, because a lot of those projects, I've been able to walk from the very stages, beginning stages of the design, all the way to, like a finished product, something that we we use on site or we put out into the field, and it's been really rewarding just to kind of be able to walk through all those different phases as an intern, as a co op. That's something that you generally don't get to do. You don't get to touch things that are that are customer facing or even internal. But Siemens Healthineers, they treat their interns and co ops as real engineers. It's really fun to have that level of responsibility, in trust in you, to design good things and to ask questions. And it's been, it's been a real joy. I've loved it.
Aaron Moncur:I love it too. I think that having internships, co ops, effectively, having real world experience before you graduate is so super, super important. I had a couple of internships before I graduated school, and I'd say that was those were the reasons that I got my first jobs, just having that practical, hands on experience already. So it sounds like they're treating you well there, and they're the fact that they treat you like a real engineer, give you responsibility, and not just have you, you know, go pick up coffee or whatever. Is fantastic. That's that's really, it sounds like you already realize how important that is. But, man, speaking from experience, it's just so, so important to have that kind of experience. So you also have this, this newsletter called The engineering way. And I'm super excited to hear a little bit more about about that you you, to me, seem like a mover and a shaker. You know, you got school going on. You got this Co Op with Siemens, big company, doing cool things there at work. And then you don't have enough to do as it is, I guess. So you're like, well, let's turn this newsletter here as well. Tell me about that. How did it get started?
Camden Shuman:For sure, I had known that I always wanted to kind of get into writing and eventually maybe have a blog. But it kind of kind of happened, because at the beginning of August of last year, in 2023 I decided, okay, I'm just going to do this thing. I've been I've been talking about it for a while. I might as well just start. So that's what I did. I started. I use beehive, and it has been an incredible product, just to write the newsletters and to send them out. And kind of the heart behind it was I really enjoy learning, and I enjoy sharing what I learned with other people, and so it gave me a platform to be able to help other people while also helping my own learning. Because when you have a weekly commitment that you've placed on yourself, like I have to put out another article that helps me to be. Always continuously learning to read more listen to more podcasts. And by the way, I've really enjoyed yours since I've discovered it. It's been, it's been a lot of fun listening, listening to that I've learned a lot from the engineers that you've brought on in from you. And I think that all just kind of feeds into the engineering way. And the goal of it is to help engineers, just with kind of more of the softer skills, like communication, you know, how do you how do you do an interview? How do you hold a conversation with people at events? Just to kind of leverage those things, because engineers are really good, usually at technical skills, but a lot of times we're not as good at the soft skills, and that's one of the things that can make an engineer leaps and bounds differentiated above other engineers, and something that makes them a really powerful asset for companies and just people in general,
Aaron Moncur:totally I often say that if you're The from a technical standpoint, the most gifted engineer in the world. But your communication, your soft skills, aren't that good. There's a limit to how far you can go in your career. But if you're if your technical skills are good enough, you know, I have to be at least some kind of minimum viable level. Maybe that's 80th percentile or 70th percentile, whatever it is, as long as they're good enough. But if your communication skills, your people skills, your soft skills, are really, really excellent, there's almost no limit to how far you could go. So it's cool that you've figured that out so early in your newsletter. One, I mean, you've written about a lot of things. One of the things that you talked about was sketching for engineers. And this is a skill that I've always wished I was more skilled in but I'm not so tell me a little bit about sketching as it relates to engineering. Is this something that you've used in your co op or your classes, or just personal projects? And how did you come to be interested in sketching for engineers?
Camden Shuman:Well, I'll have to agree with you there about not being very good at sketching. I'm still in the early stages of learning how to do it, and I found some really good online course, courses from industrial designers. I don't know if you're familiar with Marius Kindler. He's a German industrial designer and has really beautiful sketches. So I saw one of his courses, and the importance for me to be able to sketch, and how it relates to engineering is that it takes time to get into CAD and to design the thing that you want. Like, there are some people who are pretty fast at it, but you're still talking on the order of, you know, 10 minutes, all the way up to two hours before you have something to show somebody. So I think that one of the powerful things about sketching, especially like low fidelity sketching, is that you're able to get something out of your head and put on to a piece of paper visually very, very fluidly. And what's great about that is someone can see it instead of just using words to try to describe what you're talking about. They can they can look at it and see what you mean instead of trying to interpret what you're saying. So I think that's very powerful for just engineering teams and engineers who want to create better things, because you can go through more iterations faster, and that kind of just increases the speed at which you can do engineering. And I think that's something that's really cool, very
Aaron Moncur:cool. All right, going back to your newsletter, the engineering way it in itself, is an entrepreneurial venture, and I'm curious to hear about how you've gone about building the newsletter, like, what are some of the marketing strategies that you've used to garner an increased followership?
Camden Shuman:For sure, I definitely would say I haven't figured it all yet out yet. I'm still experimenting with things every every week I'll try something different. Kind of what I'm doing right now is more organic. So I've started with just my college How can I, how can I talk to my friends in class about what I'm doing on the side and see if it interests them? And one of the powerful stories with that, I think it was my article about how to how to make something, to go from an idea in your head to an object in your hand. Was the title of that article, and one of my friends in one of my classes read it, and I didn't realize she was was following the newsletter, and she she told me about, she was like, I read your article and inspired me to go build this glider, because she's an aerospace student. And that was something that was just really special to see that, you know, this, this thing that I'm passionate about, and I have no idea if anybody reads it, connected with someone, and I've really enjoyed seeing that. So I would say for the most part, it's been mostly organic. But I would like to get into, you know, lead magnets and maybe a little bit more paid growth as well. But just still the early days. Very
Aaron Moncur:cool, nice. So you won a competition, third place, and it was for a business idea that you have involving drones. Can you tell us a little bit about about that competition and what you won?
Camden Shuman:Sure that's that's one of the things that I really appreciate about the University of Tennessee, is it's very entrepreneurial. We. Have some very big league players like Bill Haslam, who owns, he owned Pilot Flying J for many years, so he has a big influence on the entrepreneurial spirit of UT. And also Randy Boyd, who was the owner of PetSafe brands, all the Invisible Fence stuff. He designed all that. So there's a, there's a lot being poured into the entrepreneurial community in Knoxville and also at UT. And one of those events that you mentioned was vol court, and it was just a 92nd kind of pitch competition. You have no slides. You're allowed to bring a prop if you want to. And so the idea that I had seen a little bit that wasn't being done in Knoxville is using drones to clean industrial surfaces, like like Windows. You can do mid rise buildings. You can clean like fire towers, just kind of anything that's that's large and flat and you can't get to very easily, unless you're like repelling on ropes. You can also clean solar panels. So that was kind of the pitch was to use drone set to do that. And that's being done in different places, but I haven't seen it being done in Knoxville yet. So I thought that would be a great thing to
Aaron Moncur:pitch cool. And have you built a prototype? Actually, I
Camden Shuman:didn't build any drones. There are some great drones on the market already. The engineer in me really wants to build a drone, but at the same time, I know that that would take a lot of resources and time to do that, and who knows, maybe in the future, that's something that I would do. But at the moment, it was just fun to participate in a pitch competition. Kind of get that validation for your idea, see if other people think it's a good idea as well. Not that you always need that, but it definitely, definitely helps kind of see, you know, what's inside your head? Does that make sense to everybody else? Yeah, I was
Aaron Moncur:listening to a podcast episode from Tim Ferriss, and he was interviewing Seth Godin. I think it's an older one. It was maybe a rerun. Anyway, Seth Godin, he's, for those of you who don't know who he is. He's a marketing guru. He's written, I don't know, I feel like, dozens of marketing books over the years, great author, really bright guy, who I enjoy listening to. And they were talking about about marketing. And I can't remember exactly what the question was that Tim Ferriss had posed to to Seth, but it was something along the lines of, you know, how do you succeed in business, or how do you know that your business is going to be successful, something like that. And Seth's response was so clear. This is one of the things I really appreciate about him. He's he has such an excellent command over the English language. And his response was, Are you selling something that people want to buy? And I thought, wow, that's like, so clear and direct and and insightful. And I think probably we don't as entrepreneurs. Sometimes it can, we can get lost in the excitement of, oh, let's get the new logo out there. And, like, what's the branding look like? And but the core element of any business is, are we selling something that people want to buy? So you probably experienced some of that during your pitch competition, and the judges, right? They heard your pitch and thought, oh, yeah, this is probably something that people would want to buy.
Camden Shuman:Definitely. I think that's very powerful message, like, is this something that people want to buy, because that's, that's the the MVP of a business, like, what, what do they want to buy? And I think it's very easy to get involved in, like, the logo design. Like, you know, how are we going to do all these other things kind of work on the business, but not really work on, like, what you're selling, or a relationship with the customer. And I've noticed that even just with my newsletter, like sometimes, I'll find myself procrastinating by, you know, playing around with colors and different fonts, and it can be really easy to kind of get into the graphic design side instead of actually just sitting down and writing the next article. So I definitely feel that pull at times, too. But it is, it is at the end of the day about the customer,
Aaron Moncur:yeah, okay, well, let me take a short break here and share with everyone that the being an engineer podcast is brought to you by pipeline design and engineering, where we don't design pipelines, but we do help companies develop advanced manufacturing processes, automated machines and custom fixtures, complemented With product design and R D services. Learn more at Team pipeline.us. The podcast is also sponsored by the wave, an online platform of free tools, education and community for engineers. You can learn more about the wave at the wave. Dot engineer, today we have the privilege of speaking with Camden Schumann, so Camden, you seem like a busy guy, right? You've got the Co Op, you've got school, you've got the newsletter, apparently, you're doing pitch competitions, and who knows what else as well, flying your drone around. How do you find time to do all of these things? And are there any time management? Uh, pieces of advice that you can share with us,
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Camden Shuman:Sure, it is definitely difficult to balance that schedule at times, and I have found that you kind of have to pick and choose. Sometimes school has to take the front seat. Usually it does, because that's what's going to end up getting you a job at the end of the day. So sometimes I'll have a really big assignment, and I'll need to prioritize that over the engineering way, which is, is really sad sometimes, because I'm like, I really want to work on this, but you know, school comes first, so I have had to sacrifice my kind of ship date for my article, and sometimes I'll just send it out the next day. Kind of delay it a day. And while that can can kind of feel annoying, sometimes I know that there's, there's a reason, like, I have to make my priorities pretty clear, like on paper, like, here's number one, number two, number three. And I find that it helps to just to keep a really organized calendar. And I like to, I'm a big apple guy, so I'll like to put in all my my stuff in the Apple calendar, and just have it all color coded. And I get a little notification when it's time to do this next thing, and it kind of takes the stress out of trying to keep it all in your head. And I found that's been really helpful to just feel like you can be present in every moment. Instead of trying to think ahead to whatever's coming next, you can just look at your calendar and see, okay, here, here are the things that are coming up, and here's how I can be prepared for those things. And one of the things that's helped with that, too, is, I don't know if you've heard of the idea building a second brain. Have you heard of that? No, okay, so it's something you should definitely check out. And basically the idea is to, instead of trying to remember everything, keep it all in your head a second brain can be simple as like a notebook, writing things down as they pop in your head. That way you can kind of clear some mental space. And also you can do it digitally too, or a combination of both. And so I put a lot of stuff in my notes app on my iPhone, just to kind of keep that my head clear and I can stay present in every moment, because once you start not writing things down, things get missed, you feel more stressed out. Your kind of shoulders are tense. So I found that to be really helpful as well, in addition to the calendar for managing my time, I
Aaron Moncur:haven't heard it referred to as building a second brain, but it makes total sense, I am a huge advocate of lists. I have all kinds of lists, lists about what to talk to this particular team member about, lists of things I need to chores I need to do at home, lists of conversations to have with my kids, list of things to do when I feel not motivated and lethargic, I have all sorts of lists. So I've outsourced a lot of that thinking too, to the second brain, right? As you put it.
Camden Shuman:Well, to be fair, I can't take credit for it, because it's the actual idea was made by Matt Forte, and you just released a book recently titled building a second brain. So I stole it from him, but I definitely use it heavily,
Aaron Moncur:nice. Yeah, that's great. I also really appreciate your method of creating calendar events to schedule your your week. And this is something that I've been doing myself for a long time as well. I find it to be incredibly effective to usually, over the weekend, I'll sit down and take maybe 30 to 60 minutes and just plan out what are the like, the big things that I need to get done next week. What do I really need to accomplish next week? And then I'll schedule those out on my calendar, just like you do, and then when it comes time for, you know, Monday morning, I'm not scrambling and trying to figure out, okay, what am I what should I work on right now? What am I going to work on tomorrow? It's all there. It's just it's in the calendar. You've already done the thinking beforehand to ensure that the right priorities are scheduled. And so now all you have to do is. Like, follow the calendar, right? It becomes almost automatic at that point. And I think that's a super effective way to manage your time. It's cool that you already discovered this at such a young age.
Camden Shuman:Thank you. Yeah, I definitely have had parents who have helped me with that back in I remember back when I was in, you know, grade school and middle school, you'd be like, Okay, write that thing down, or you're probably going to forget it. And there are a lot of times where I forgot to take out the trash growing up and, you know, it didn't end well. I was like, Okay, here's a teaching moment. You gotta, you gotta write stuff down. You gotta remember to, you know, take your sisters to school, like, that's important. Don't forget, you know, don't leave them at the house. Just, just things like that, where they have helped me kind of build that muscle and grow that muscle, planning and scheduling. And it has served me really well without the ability to plan and write things down, I would, I would not do well in in school or in my co op, and at my co op, my kind of my function for my second brain. Instead of it being digital, I like to have a really big, thick Moleskine, and every day, I kind of write the date at the top and then all of the priorities for the day. And it's just nice to kind of see, okay, here's the game plan, and here's where I want to what I want to have accomplished, and where I want to go. I have this meeting at this time, and I find that really helpful.
Aaron Moncur:Very cool. I love it. You're obviously interested in business and being an entrepreneur, with the pitch competition, the newsletter, and probably other things that you're doing, I'm curious, what is you know? What is the goal for you? What do you want to be doing with engineering and entrepreneurship 510, years from now?
Camden Shuman:For sure, I'm still kind of figuring that out. I really enjoy business I love reading, like business books. I just read the Lean Startup recently, and loved it there. There are a lot of really cool books out there that I want to breed, and I've got a stack this big. You can't see it, but it's behind my screen here, and it's, I think at the end of the day, I would love to be a be a business owner. Kind of have that flexibility when I need it, but also have something that I can that I can build and be proud of, and just have some financial stability for my family. I think would be family one day. I think would be really nice. That would be something that would be very, very cool to have, and also to kind of have the job security. Obviously, you have to take care of your company, but have a little bit more job security. Instead of having things like the pandemic or all the layoffs that happen, I think it would be, it'd be really nice to kind of be able to own that process and lead teams and kind of point people and build culture. I think those things are all really, really compelling.
Aaron Moncur:You mentioned culture. Have you read the book? Or is the book on your radar? Culture
Camden Shuman:code? I've heard of it. I don't have it, but I'll add it to the list. Do you? Do you have any other advice for engineers who want to do do things that similar to you who are interested in business because you started pipeline design, what was the process with that? And what tips would you have for engineering students who are interested in entrepreneurship and kind of want to go and do do things like that?
Aaron Moncur:I wouldn't necessarily recommend my path to everyone I got laid off, and which is generally acknowledged, is like not the best thing to happen to you, right? But looking back, it was genuinely one of the best things that ever happened to me. Now, had I to do it over again, I probably would have prepared a little bit more, right? I think an effective way to dip your toe into the entrepreneurial pool is to have a full time job and learn as much as you can there and on the side, do some freelance work, right? There's an author, a business author, Jim Jim Collins, is that his name Good to Great? Kind of blanking? Good to Great? Yeah, right, right. Jim Collins, and he talks about firing bullets instead of cannonballs. Have you read that? Can't remember which book it was in, though.
Camden Shuman:I'm not sure if I have. I've read good degree, but don't remember that line. That's great, though.
Aaron Moncur:Yeah, so he talks about firing bullets, and that's a phrase that we use a lot here at Pipeline. Is like, what's a bullet that we can fire here, right? What's a small test that we can do where the consequences of failure are not catastrophic before we like go all in on something. So firing bullets in parallel to working a full time job, I think is a great approach, and that way you start to get a sense for what works and what doesn't in a kind of safe environment where you can't really fail too badly. I think that understanding people and how to deal with people is probably one of the most important things that we can do as business owners. I mentioned that book culture code. I really would, if I were you and interested in business, read that book because it's been one of the best books about business. Even though it's just it's focused on people and culture, it's been one of the best business books that I've ever. Read, and I've listened to it now probably half a dozen times, and I feel like I always get something new from it. So that's a wonderful one in the beginning. One thing that I noticed, and I still notice to this day, we're still small company, is that the ability to do a lot of different things on your own is really, really valuable. Before I started pipeline, I with a friend of mine, actually ran a small photography business, and so I had some photography and and video skills back then. And then I also started just a small side hustle thing, building websites back in the day. This is before, maybe not before, but like during the early days of WordPress, when Dreamweaver was still a thing, Adobe Dreamweaver, you'd like build, like, actually build a website, doing all the CSS, the HTML yourselves, before there were all these Wordpress templates. So I did that. And so I had, like, some non engineering skills that that I could fall back on. And I used them a lot. I did, you know, my own photography to show people work that I had done, and I built my own website, and I did some of the accounting on my own in the early, early days. And so I had kind of a good collection of skills, so I didn't have to outsource all these things. And the thing about outsourcing is it's more expensive a but it also takes so much more time, you know, and I find that there's so many things that I can just do as well or better than people who to whom I'd outsource. So having the ability to do a lot of these things by yourself is, I think, really valuable, especially when it's the really early days and it's, you know, maybe just you and the company, you can move so much faster and for so much less money. So those are a couple of things that come to mind. The Product Development expo or PDX is your chance to learn from subject matter experts providing practical, hands on training for dozens of different engineering topics, Gd and T advanced surface modeling, DFM, plating and finishing techniques, programming robots, adhesive, dispensing, prototyping, tips and tricks and lots more. PDX happens October, 21 and 22nd in Phoenix, Arizona. Learn more at PD Expo. Dot engineer. That's P, D, E, x, p, O, dot engineer.
Camden Shuman:That's awesome. Yeah, I'll definitely have to check out that book culture code in it. It kind of reminded me of one book I read. I've actually written it like three times now. It's called never split the difference by Chris moss, and it's all about negotiation. I don't know if you've read it, it's really good, kind of how to interact with people for a mutually beneficial like outcome as well.
Aaron Moncur:Yeah, yeah. He's great. He has a master class that I've been meaning to take, and I haven't yet. I have read the book, but it's been a while. He's he's kind of made the rounds all over the place. He's a cool guy that really knows his stuff when it comes to negotiation
Camden Shuman:for sure. Yeah, that's awesome. Well,
Aaron Moncur:let's see. So you've got about a year left until you graduate. What are, what are some of the concerns that you have about transitioning from school into the the workforce? What are some things that you're worried about, and what? What do you hope? What kind of foundation do you hope there will be at the companies at which you work when that transition occurs?
Camden Shuman:Sure, I think just kind of the mad dash at this this fall, I'll have a lot of things on my plate with still working at Siemens, Healthineers, doing the Co Op, also having senior design and some hardcore engineering classes as well, kind of juggling all those things will definitely be challenging while trying to apply for a lot of positions. And I think just kind of the unknown, like where I have no idea where I could end up, and that's that's an exciting thing, but also kind of a cause for worry, but I'm for the most part, pretty optimistic and hopeful, because I know that engineering has prepared me well to go into any type of work, whether you know that be like starting my own company, or becoming an engineer, an individual contributor at Another company, and I think both of those paths would be, would be really fun at the beginning. I still haven't decided what exactly I want to do, but really, really looking forward to getting into the workforce. And that's something that's been so fun about seeing this helping ears, is I really enjoyed the nine to five, like school, you're kind of on all the time. You're working, from when you wake up to, you know, 12 o'clock, one o'clock at night, when you when you go to bed. And that's something that took some getting used to, coming into engineering. And I think that's a lot of that's one of the things that prospective engineering students don't quite realize, the the level of work that it takes to to get by. You know, not even straight A's all the time, but. Just to, just to pass your classes. And I think that's something that people should have have a clear, clear eyes going into, but not to scare people from engineering, because it is. It's one of the best things that I've ever done, and I've loved every minute. But there are definitely those times where you have to buckle down and sacrifice a little bit of sleep to get everything done. Yeah,
Aaron Moncur:I remember the same thing, just feeling like I always had to be on there's always a test coming up I had to study for, all is another homework assignment that I had to make sure was completed. And man, the day that I really, truly finished it was I turned it a thesis for my master's degree. And that was literally the very last thing that I ever had to do at school, and that was such a wonderful day, you're almost there. It's just just one more go by quickly. Yeah, any advice that that you would give to other engineering students who are thinking about, you know, a co op or an internship and like how to go about doing that.
Camden Shuman:Sure, it's funny. You bring it up, because I'll actually be starting a new position in the fall where I'll be advising students on just this. I'm joining the engineering professional practice office at UT, where I'll help students with practice interviews and with resume help. So I think one of the biggest piece of advice that I have is just to really fall in love with the process of learning and to find out information about the company try to find resources that they have. And I think LinkedIn is a great place for engineering students who want to get involved in internships and co ops as well. And I don't know if this interview would have even happened if we hadn't connected on LinkedIn. So there's something very powerful to kind of starting to build your your social network, and to talking to your your friends in classes about what they're interested in, and also reaching out to companies, not not with the not with the intent of getting something in return like that. You know that may be something that you want, but just get in the habit of starting to build relationships with people, just just for the sake of learning from them. I go into every conversation with with anybody, whether I like them or can't stand them. I go into the conversation there's something to be learned from this person. They figured out something that I haven't. And I think if you take that mindset into into just life in general. It'll help in co ops and internships, for sure, but it is something that is really powerful and will just differentiate you as as an engineer and just as a person, to be willing to listen to people ask good questions, and kind of learn what about what they do and how you can how you can benefit
Aaron Moncur:from that. Yeah, there are a couple of things that I really appreciated you saying there. One was especially for for students, right, getting involved in LinkedIn, to start building your your network. If you're in college, then you should already be doing this. And if you're not, you should start because that network is so important, to start reaching out to people. The second thing you said was doing so not with the intent of receipt, receiving or gaining something, but just with the intent of building your network, and hopefully, if, if possible, offering some sort of value to the people that you reach out to. Oftentimes, you'll find that if you're genuinely just looking for advice from someone, they're going to be really willing to share their time and give you that advice. But if you can go into those conversations with the mindset of, what can I do for this person with the understanding that you're probably not going to get anything back from it, that's really powerful and healthy mindset to have. In fact, I'll go back to the question that you asked earlier, which was, what advice do I have for engineers who are thinking about starting their own business? That was another one that was really powerful for me in the beginning, is that I would do some free work sometimes I certainly wanted to get paid, but I also realized that I didn't have a lot to show for myself yet, and doing free work was a way to just build a little bit of a portfolio and goodwill, right with people. So that was that was really helpful, and something I think is important to to be open to doing that in the very, very beginning, you're probably not going to get paid a lot, or sometimes anything, and that's okay within reason. Of course, you can't do all of the work for free. You need to put rice on the table. But anyway, let's see as so you're in your last year of school right now, anything that you wish you knew back when you were starting as a freshman that you knew now?
Camden Shuman:Oh, man, that feels like forever ago, and not that long at the same time, I think just to just to try, just try hard, know that it's okay to fail. Failure is part of the process. Like I've been in classes where, you know, the average is like a 45 and that's when you start to realize, like, okay, engineering is hard, but I can do this. There are people next to me. I. I can talk to them. Maybe this person over here understood problem seven on the homework and I didn't, or maybe I understood problem five and they didn't. And so I think it's really important to build relationships with other students as early as you can, people that you're you're walking from class to class with, and because I have found some really great friends from from freshman year that I worked on projects with them in kind of the engineering fundamental classes, basic physics stuff, and it's been really fun to kind of grow with them and to learn from them, because some of my friends are really good at things that I'm not, so I'll lean on them for help with coding. We like to use MATLAB here at University of Tennessee, and coding. It's really interesting to me, but it's not sometimes it can be kind of challenging. So I'll lean on some of my friends like you understand how to do this, and they'll be able to explain it to me. And it goes both ways. Just, you know, kind of that, that mutual benefit, helping helping other people, and they'll help you. And I think that's something that's really powerful to start building those friendships and relationships during during freshman year, because it's easy to go into it thinking it's me against this engineering degree, it's me against the world, but really it's not. There are people that are supporting you and helping you along the way, and you can begin to build those relationships. And I think that's something that I wish I would have done even more of in freshman year.
Aaron Moncur:One more point about building relationships. The fact that you started this newsletter the engineering way, I think that's such a great way to develop a network. I mean, you're probably going to graduate. You got the co op already. That's a big deal. And you've got this engineering way newsletter by which I'm sure that you've met a lot of people that you wouldn't have otherwise, I think you and I mean, I'm one of those people, and there are probably a lot of others out there. So to your point of building a network, if you can do something, and in this case, you're providing value to other people, right? I think your net, your newsletter is free, and people can just sign up for us. You're providing all this value. You're putting in your own time and and the the I guess, reciprocity you get from the community is just knowing people who appreciate what you've done and probably feel a sense of goodwill towards you and want to help you. So that's a big deal. If you can come up with something to contribute to the community and just go out and do it, it's going to, it's going to pay dividends for you in the future.
Camden Shuman:And I think that was one of the things that I didn't really expect when I started the engineering way. I just kind of thought, hey, this will be a fun, you know, kind of side project, little hobby, you know, who knows? Maybe nobody will even care. But I just kept up with it. Kept writing. I think the first email I sent out had like three subscribers on it, and half of those, you know, two of those were my family. So it starts out pretty small, but there's that proverb, like, do not despise the day of small beginnings. And I think that's something that just engineering students at large can learn from like you have to start somewhere, and you can start today. And I think that's something had I started the engineering way even earlier. Who knows the types of relationships I could form? It's been really, really surprising all the relationships with people through LinkedIn and also one of the donors from my college discovered the engineering way, and I had a great conversation with him, and it has led to consulting work for him, paid consulting work. So that has been something that's been very surprising, but a huge benefit. So I definitely recommend that any engineering student, you know, work on something that you're interested in, find, find a hobby, you know, build a robot like do, do something that will show your interest in engineering, and also can help other people. That's a that's another bonus that you can add to it too, and start to build that portfolio.
Aaron Moncur:I love it. I love it. Makes me think of the phrase givers gain. This is something a coach that I've worked with his talk to me about a lot over the years, givers gain, and when you start putting stuff out into the world, into the community, eventually it comes back to you in a very profound and meaningful way. Well, Camden, thank you so much for spending some time with me today. What a fun conversation this has been. And I can just tell, man, you're a smart guy, you're you're driven, you're capable, and I think you're going to do great in career and in life. So keep keep it up. Keep up the good work, and thanks for being on the show today.
Camden Shuman:Thank you very much, Aaron. That's very kind of you to say it's been pleasure.
Aaron Moncur:I'm Aaron monkirk, founder of pipeline design and engineering. If you liked what you heard today, please share the episode to learn how your team can leverage our team's expertise developing advanced manufacturing processes, automated machines and custom fixtures, complemented with product design and R and D services. Visit us at Team pipeline.us. Us to join a vibrant community of engineers online visit the wave. Dot engineer, thank you for listening. You.
