S8E6 - Cosmic Communication

Women's History Month: Celebrating Lisa Jackson's Sustainable Impact Hello everyone, and welcome to Around the Helix powered by Iron Range Engineering. This is Darcy kicking off our episode 6 in season 8 today, and it is woman's History Month. So March is woman's History Month and I want to share just a little bit about Lisa Jackson. Well, actually I'm going to share about the theme of women's History Month. So this year for 2026, the national women's history alliance has themed women's History Month as leading the change women shaping A sustainable future, which doesn't just mean environmental concerns. It also includes financial sustainability, community resilience, leadership succession, and intergenerational equity. So for a sustainable future, systems have to support both the people and the planet, and that's something that the National Women's History Alliance wants to emphasize, and I will link to that in the show notes. But then to talk a little bit about Lisa Jackson, who is a woman engineer who has done a lot to impact sustainability. This one is specifically environmental sustainability in a lot of her work, but she's also, I'm sure, had a lot of other sustainability pieces in mind and impacted those. But Lisa did her master's degree at Princeton in chemical engineering, and she started out as a staff scientist and project manager at the Environmental Protection Agency. So that's the EPA, if you're not familiar with what that acronym stands for in DC. And then she moved on to New Jersey's Department of Environmental Protection. She was an administrator of the EPA under Barack Obama, and then she became Apple's vice president of environment policy and social initiatives, helping Apple to remove toxins from its products, incorporate renewable energy, and increase energy efficiency in electronics. And I will link to both the links of where I found this information from both from Princeton and from Sustainability Magazine. And I want to note that Lisa Jackson just recently retired from Apple and she made a big impact on the ways that they decided to make their products, source their materials, those sorts of things. So it was very interested to read a little bit more about Lisa. And on today's episode we are focused more on communication and writing. And for the segments, Jersey and Angie are gonna give us a little Co-op advice on communication and boundaries. Nico is going to talk about coding with AI and they are going to interview Abby. Trevor is going to talk about growing Peppers with hydroponics, and Lexi is going to share about lessons learned, knowing your audience. And then I have some special guests joining me for the community conversation this week since Luke is out travelling. And so you'll get to know both John and Ben. And we will share a little bit more about the importance of writing. So stay tuned and happy listening. Navigating Co-op Experiences: Communication Skills and Setting Boundaries Hello everyone, My name is Jersey Binion. I'm from Central Illinois and my current role is a site civil intern in Pittsburgh and I am here with. Speaker 3 Hi everybody, I'm Angie Duran. I'm from Fillmore, CA currently working at a manufacturing engineer. Speaker 2 OK, And the fun question we've decided to answer is what's your favorite way to pamper yourself? For me, when I have the money, cuz this can be really expensive, is I like to go out to hot pot. I had it. I've had it twice now and I like to do it when I've had a very stressful week or maybe even a month. Speaker 3 And then As for me, this is also when the finances are line up, I'd like to go for a massage. I really like a deep tissue massage seen as my job requires some little bit more of hard labor. So getting a massage over here and there's is kind of rewarding. And for our segment, we will be talking about our Co-op experiences and advice. So to start off, I work as I mentioned, in a manufacturing company. I get to work with a lot of different people from engineers to assemblers to machinist as well with suppliers that are within the company. So there's a lot of communication that revolves around my position. So I want to say the biggest advice would be working on your communication skills, being able to communicate with people within your same understanding of what you are attacking in terms of projects, as well as being able to communicate with people who are just regular, regular builders, assemblers, machinists. A lot of the time when I am working, I never know when a project will come up on my desk. One of the I've been working with the company now for a year and the biggest projects that have come by on my desk have been from assemblers themselves. I go out and talk to them every morning at the beginning of my shift at the end to make sure everything is running smooth with them. They don't need anything from me in case there's something that breaks down. So a lot of projects were recommended from them, whether it being a safety issue, a fixture issue, I have never known until I have talked to them. So biggest take away I guess for me is communicate with everyone, not just your peers that are within the office. Get to know people outside of the office, the areas they work because you will never know what's wrong until you start talking to them. Yeah, pretty much it for me. Speaker 2 Yeah. And I can kind of throw in with that as someone who does civil work, we're working with teams who we all have to come together to design something. So we have like geotechnical and environmental teams and we have to communicate with them, like what issues there may be or what they recommend for like asphalt pavement or concrete pavement. And I've also made some really good friends on the other teams. So communicate well without. That's not just the engineers, 'cause you can make friends with some really good people. And then kind of going on that communication bit, I just worked probably one of the hardest weeks of my career here at the company that I work for. I worked for them as well about a year now and I've gotten some more responsibility with the team. But this last couple of weeks we have this project that has a very quick turn around time. It's for a hospital close to where I'm at and they're wanting to stay within a certain acreage for this project. But they also want to turn it around very quick because it is a hospital and things need to be done quickly and we are short staffed. We don't have enough people, we don't have enough senior staff. And so I took on this project kind of all alone, which is the project manager. And usually there's a staff and a senior staff who works on the project. And it's just kind of been me. And it was really rough, but I communicated with them that I was being extremely overworked, that I was stressed out, that I was getting burnt out. And they understood. They told me they knew that they were putting a lot of pressure on me to get things done and that they would give me a break. I think sometimes they forget that I am also doing full time school and setting that boundary is so extremely important, especially as someone who is a student. I will admit I am a little behind on some of my work. And I told them that and they've been very understanding about me being a student and that I do need to have some days off where I'm not working a ton of overtime so that I can do my work. So please set boundaries with them. Don't be afraid to communicate. They will normally be really understanding. I have met some very great people at the company that I work. Speaker 3 For yeah. So kind of what our whole segment today is just about learning how to communicate. It's going to take you a, it's going to go a long ways when to learn how to communicate with everyone, not just your peers. It, it will take you, like I said, a long way. I, I've gotten to know a lot of people from different age range from different areas. And like I said, I've been working with the company for a year now and you, there's a lot you can learn from the people who work around you. I've now learned how to run certain machines that I did not know how to run before, all because I spoke to somebody who who ran the machine, who ran specific, who knew how to build specific products that I didn't know that I would need to know for future work. So overall, from both perspectives, it's it's best to learn how to communicate, get out of the office every here and there and and continue that growth of that skill and that growth to be a little bit more extroverted in your work in your area. Speaker 2 Right. And I think it's also a lesson learned to ask as many questions as you want. I understand you may feel like you're bothering them with questions. The project manager that I was working with on this project that's been so very stressful for me, he said he was very happy with all the questions that I was asking him because he knew that I was putting in the effort to make sure everything looked good, that everything had the correct quality that we were wanting to share with the client. He was very happy with them. I've even talked to some of the senior staff and said, hey, if I do ask you too many questions, please let me know. And they always tell me, as long as it sounds like you're learning and that you want to learn more, just don't come back and constantly ask us the same question because that means you're not learning. But they've never been bothered by my questions, and it really shows your interest in the company. I'm trying to work with this company full time and they've been very pleased because I'm always asking those questions and wanting to learn more about the process so that if I do come back full time, I'm very set up and farther along than what a new hire would really look like. And I think that is all we have for you guys. So thank you for listening to our podcast segment. Speaker 3 Yeah. Thank you. Leveraging AI for Efficient Coding and Large Data Processing Hi, I'm Nico Bochkov. I'm here with Abby Lower who has just graduated from the IRA program. I personally prefer salty food. I have a medical condition that makes it so that I need like double the amount of salt as a normal person, so salty food is the way to go for me. Speaker 5 Yeah, so while salty snacks are really good, I personally have a pretty serious sweet tooth. So I'm I'm gonna have to go down the sweet Rd. just cuz you know, like cookies and brownies and pear. So good. Speaker 4 So dark chocolate with salt on it is. Speaker 5 Oh yeah, or like a salted caramel. Like so good. Speaker 4 So we are going to talk about AI usage specifically around like AI with coding. So for background, I work in biomedical, currently at Bronco Medical Technologies. Abby, where are you working right now? Speaker 5 Yeah. So I'm currently with L&M Radiator and I'm a member of the design and application engineering department. So I do a lot of work with customers globally to design custom solutions. Speaker 4 I forgot to mention I'm in the R&D department, specifically systems and within the systems systems tank. And so I work a lot about testing 2 requirements, testing around requirements, making sure we can test those requirements during formal BNB and that the limits of the requirements make sense given our product. Because sometimes we set those really early in the project before we had a working prototype that we could see if those were the accurate guesses. You might be wondering where I use AI in that we use AI lot for data processing, not only for data processing, but for making different Gui's to interface with the device or to interface with a data processing script. Some of our recordings or data acquisitions can take up to 40 minutes. And if we're recording at 100 Hertz, that is a lot of data to process with Excel. And so we've really switched the Python to do it or Excel got mad when we had more than two of those files open at the same time. And in using Python to process all of this data and interface with the processing of all this data, I really started using AI, which is allowed in my workplace. And I think there's something to be said about using AI to kind of get the basis of the code, but it doesn't do everything correctly. And a lot of times it's sometimes faster to do the minor tweaks yourself, right? But it gives you a really good foundation. So you can also start to understand sort of how to code, because neither one of us are computer or software engineers. Speaker 5 Yeah, yeah. I feel like with the work you've done, you've definitely got LED farther down the software path, I guess, than I have at this point in my career. But it's interesting that you mentioned using AI for managing like large amounts of data and whatnot and in particular with respect to Excel. So I've done some similar things with not really a focus I guess on system testing data, but more on managing information that is shared between a large amount of people. So L&M Radiator used to be a family owned company from up in hitting Minnesota. However, about 2 1/2 years ago they were purchased by Wabtec Corporation. So under the Wabtec family of companies, there are two other companies called Bare Word Engineering and Young Touchstone, which are in Utah and actually the United Kingdom. So they're also manufacturers of what we call heat transfer engineering solutions. So a big push recently in my workplace has been to share the information needed to design heat exchangers for specific engines or pieces of equipment, to share the databases that each business unit has so that we can all see what everybody has. And it will reduce lead times for all three companies and improve collaboration. So I've been put in charge of a shared database of engine data and I've been implementing a lot of automation to track revisions and help with inputting the data sheets correctly, making sure it's updated, and then also creating a kind of kind of like a GUI. But I guess in the world of like corporations and you know, everybody trying to work together with Synergy, as they all like to say, they call them dashboards, but it's basically like a graphical user interface that allows for quick searching within these large databases. And I've started building out a lot of these automated tools within Excel's Visual Basic editor coding environment, which is pretty primitive when you compare it to something like Python. But it, it's kind of, I guess dipping my toes into the water of coding. And I kind of, I guess take a little bit of an opposite approach where I'll write the foundations of my code in the VBA environment, give it a few tests and see what kind of errors are running I run into. Or like, if it's not working and I don't understand why, then I'll plug it into AI and kind of help help with some of those troubleshooting aspects. Or I'll get a foundation down and then ask AI like, hey, how can I improve this? And like what can I do? And it's kind of a newer thing for everyone in the company because it was actually just at the start of this year that Wabtech approved the use of Microsoft Copilot. So that's the only one that we can use and kind of everybody's learning it together. So I feel like it's been an interesting journey, especially working with two other businesses with it as well. Speaker 4 Yeah, what I always like make sure since I use AI to do some more of the basics, just cause a lot of my scripts for data processing and that, but you know, over 100 lines of code and that's a lot to write for a single person. My scripts are really long. Speaker 5 Mine aren't that long. Speaker 4 Is kind of going through and looking at every segment, making sure I know where, what, what's happening at every stage of transforming the data. And that's really helpful because a lot of times you'll be talking about your data and someone will want to see your script or they'll go, hey, can you really quickly change these couple of parameters? And you need to be able to do that on the fly. And so I think it's, you know, it's good to use AI when you're coding and that's how industry is going, but you need to make sure that you're still knowing what you're doing. Speaker 5 Yeah, that's I really like a nice function of like when you start a conversation and copilot is to tell it that, hey, I want to understand everything that you helped me with. So it'll kind of give you these nice paragraphs explaining what it was doing or what what it tweaked or what what an issue was. And I like that you mentioned how it's good for working things through on the fly because sometimes for some of the databases that I manage, we have monthly calls with engineers from all three of the different businesses on the call. And a lot of times someone will bring up a really great idea of like, huh, I really wish that our dashboard could have this functionality. And it's kind of nice to just pop over to the Copilot window and just ask, like, is this something that I could do? Like, is this a possible feature that I could add based on the codes that I've already shown you for this, since it saves conversations. And then it can say, yeah, So then in the meeting, you can be like, yeah, just did, you know, a quick, quick check. And it should be something that we can work towards implementing. And then the team has a good idea of what's possible or not and good ways to move forward. So it can be really nice for that aspect as well. Speaker 4 Yeah. And I think we are out of time. So thank you. Speaker 5 Yeah. Thank you. Trevor's Hydroponics Hobby and Lexie on Knowing Your Audience Hello, my name is Trevor, I am from Monterey, CA and my current role is a mechanical engineer at the Naval Postgraduate School. If I had to speak in only movie quotes for a day, I honestly could get by in Star Wars. I am sure that my bosses would pick up on the quotes. My hobby is growing Peppers with hydroponics. I started with hydroponics a few years ago because I saw videos of it and thought it'd be interesting to try. And I have always had a green thumb and grew up, you know, growing vegetables in a greenhouse that I built in when I was younger. And it's stuck with it stuck with me. And now hydroponics is a lot easier and I recommend it to someone who wants to grow indoors or just do less systematic labor. You know, instead of having to water your plants every other day, you maintain your system and water your plants once a month. And so it allows you to not over commit time wise when you are low on time. Speaker 7 Hello, my name is Lexie Huber, I am from Maryland and I work as a traffic analysis engineer. For the question, what is the weirdest food I've ever tried? Well, I'm a pretty adventurous eater and I've tried a lot of weird foods, but Mountain Lion and possum were definitely some of the most unusual. So today I'm going to talk about one of the most important lessons I learned during my Co-op experience, and it came from something so small as the length of a turn lane. And so in traffic engineering, we represent turn lanes sort of differently in our modeling depending on what jurisdiction we're in. Sometimes we represent them exactly as you would imagine. We measure them and we have the full width of the lane and then we add on a taper, which is that part where it sort of angles from full width to to know know width. That's where you merge in. And then we also have something which is effective storage which includes the full width portion of the lane plus half the taper and that sort of represents what you can effectively fit a car into and it be out of the other lane. So that's your effective storage, right? And quite often in our modeling, we will use effective storage as opposed to modeling the full width and the taper. And things can get really complicated when you need to present your recommendations and your findings based on modeling to decision makers. And the way the turn lane has been represented in modeling does not always align with the documentation requirements. And so on a project that I worked on, I understood both definitions and I understood that I needed to use effective for my modeling. But what I didn't understand was that there was a difference in the modeling versus the reporting. And I thought I was improving consistency by using effective storage and that language throughout the process. And my thinking was simply that if we're modeling effective storage, then that is also what we should be reporting. And what I learned the hard way was that modeling inputs are internal tools and reports are communication tools. Agencies and reviewers need to understand the full physical conditions on the ground, so including the taper and how much is full storage, because those geometries need to be reflected accurately for safety and feasibility and design reasons. And they are not looking for my software inputs, they are looking for what needs to actually be built. I had to worry work an entire report because I misunderstood the distinction. And so the lesson for me was that being technically correct is not the same as being professionally effective engineers. Engineering is not just about calculations, but it's sort of about understanding the standards and the expectations, and it's really about understanding your audience. And so my advice to other students is make sure that you understand what format your agency expects when you're sending reports, and don't assume that your internal logic matches industry convention. You should always sort of ask yourself who is going to be reading this and what decisions are they going to be making based on my work. Thank you. Interstellar Intro: What Component of a Spaceship are References? All right. Welcome back everybody to Community Conversation. I hope you enjoyed those segments. Getting our the start of our theme here for our podcast is communication today. And specifically I've invited some the friends slash experts here to join us today to share a little bit more about communication, specifically some writing instruction as well. So I have my friends Ben and John here. They're gonna give introductions to themselves, but we're gonna have some guest speakers today because Luke ditched me. Aaron's still on leave. And so I, I had to get reinforcements and it's gonna be exciting. So buckle up. But how about Ben? Give us your intro. Who are you? Speaker 6 For sure. Hey happy to be here the B team ready to roll. Ben Norman experts, writing consultants. I am a teacher at Rockridge High School. Go Wolverines English teacher and lots of experience in the writing world. Back in college writing for the newspaper and working at the Center for Writers. So very familiar with college writing and just love writing. Love, love to read, writing and happy to share some expertise. Speaker 1 All right. Thanks, Ben. Glad you're here. How about you, John? Speaker 8 Hi, I'm John, I'm very happy to be here. Huge fan of the pod. I have no relevant expertise to offer but am happy to be in the mix. It's truly an honor. I have enjoyed catching up on back episodes and I'm excited to be here with you today. Speaker 1 Awesome. And John, John, John said that he has nothing to contribute as an expert, but John is an expert at coming up with intro questions. So, John, do you want to kick us off with our intro question too? Speaker 8 I do have an intro question for you. I heard a rumor that the topic for today is communication and that Ben is going to specifically be speaking on citations and references. So with one English expert and one engineering expert, my question for you is, if a document were a spaceship, what component of the spaceship would the references be? This is like a metaphor game. If a document were a spaceship, what component of the spaceship would the references be? Speaker 6 So we're going to take time to think pair share, right? We're just going to sit here in silence for 10 minutes and then we'll answer that right. Speaker 8 Perfect, perfect. I'm gonna I'm gonna divide you into Zoom breakout rooms. Speaker 6 Perfect. Thank you. Speaker 8 You'll need to be in a breakout room alone. Speaker 6 I didn't know you could do that but I guess you are a super fan. You should be allowed to make your own breakout rooms. Speaker 1 All right. Well, first I, yeah, I, I had my think time, so I think I'm ready. But you kick it off. Speaker 6 Yeah, I pair it up and I'm ready to share out. I think that citations and the like in terms of this spaceship metaphor, I don't think it's the engine. I think it's easy to call it the engine of the spaceship, but I I think it's the parts around the engine. It's the engine, It's under the hood and but it's not the engine itself. You, you, you pick up what I'm putting down. Speaker 8 It's around the engine, it's. Speaker 6 Around the engine area, yeah, maybe a piston. Maybe it's the Pistons. Oh, nice. Yes, it's. Speaker 1 Inside of engines. Speaker 6 Yeah, but it's not the engine. Speaker 1 He's an England. Speaker 6 It's part of the engine. OK, but hear me out. So sure, if I am in a spaceship and you know, I am trying to get to space and I don't have Pistons in my engine, I just don't think I'm gonna be getting to space, right? It's not the only thing, but it's it's, it's not the only thing gonna get me to space, but it's, it's, it's integral to getting me out of that atmosphere into the exosphere. Speaker 8 As I said, I'm no expert in anything, but I think if your spaceship has an engine that includes Pistons, that might be another reason. Speaker 6 Yeah, it's AV eight. Yeah. Yeah, that thing's got a heavy great question. All right, Darcy, what do you think? Speaker 1 I'm going to relate it back to we've been talking about this recently in fluid mechanics about the center of pressure. And something that really effects your center of pressure on a rocket ship is where you place your fins. And so I'm going to go with your citations or your fins because it makes a big difference where you place them and how you place them for how your rocket ship is going to function. And so it's not what's actually getting it off the ground. That's the that's the engine and Ben's supporting engine thing. Speaker 6 Pistons. Yes, the Pistons and my spaceship. Yes, you. Speaker 1 Can't make this happen, but the fins are going to guide it in in this process of launching. And so it's supporting, it's making sure we're stable, I think, I think is my analogy where I'm sitting. Speaker 8 Nice, I like that. I like that. Great answers all around. Speaker 1 What's your answer, John? Speaker 6 Yeah, go ahead, John. Speaker 8 I did. Oh. Should I reveal the correct answer at this point? Yes, please. No, I don't think there's a correct answer and I was not anticipating being asked for my answer. Speaker 6 You think Pistons is the right answer? Speaker 8 I think these are great answers. Gosh, maybe you know, I've the how the space shuttle back in the day had like the huge component that was like all fuel that got you out of the atmosphere and then just a little the smaller actual shuttle that gets you out the rest of the way. Once you're out and about. I think maybe the references are the huge fuel tank that gets you out of the atmosphere because it helps, it helps get you beyond like, you know, the basic, the stuff that we've all all kind of covered so far. You know, we, we know we can get to the edge of the atmosphere. We have these huge tanks. They'll get us there. And then what we really want to do is once we're out of the atmosphere, cruise around in our, in our sleek little spaceship. But you can't get there without, you know, without the, the big fuel tanks that get you out of the atmosphere. You know, that's the work that came before. Speaker 6 Without the Pistons. Speaker 8 Absolutely. Nor the Pistons, Exactly. Exactly. I think we're all in agreement, yeah. Speaker 1 You like it? Speaker 6 Shout out shout out to Jack Jack, Doctor Jack Elliott. He's going to love this analysis. Speaker 1 We all know how spaceships work, obviously so, but one thing we do know is that Ben knows what's going on with writing. So Beth, let's rein it back in. Ben Norman's Three Pillars of Successful Writing: Learn, Authenticity, Audience, and Sources OK, Let's relate it in. What are your tidbits for us today of how to successfully write specifically in? We have a bunch of students listening, but also there's a workplace too, so. Speaker 6 Yes, Darcia, thank you so much. This We're back, we're down to earth here. So I think my main message is my main things. If I were to boil it down to three essential takeaways, be something along the lines of writing to learn the importance of being able to write and just like doing the writing and going through that process, writing authentically, like finding your voice, writing for yourself and writing for your audience, specifically professional audience as well. And among all these things, we're talking about sources and the importance of citing sources, finding good sources, doing good research as well. I mean, I think that ties into all three of those. You're going to learn from other sources. If you're being authentic, you're diving deep and you're doing your homework and your audience expects you, your professors expect you to cite sources and to integrate sources. And if you are out in the field, whatever field you end up being in, you need that professional integrating sources as well. That's what's that's what separates you from the layman and the professionals. You know your field, you know your audience, and that's what's going to get you out to space, right? That's what's going to send you into the galaxy's far, Far away is getting a getting a handle on your writing and doing a good job with it and integrating sources. So those are the three main things I think we talked about today. And if we learn anything from those, we'll be good to go. Speaker 1 Sweet, I like it Sweet. Oh, sorry, I talked at the same time. No, I'm gonna have to edit in the middle of the segment. Speaker 6 Rats, Rats. Speaker 1 And now I lost my train of thought. Yeah, I think I like the three. So right to learn, right, Authentically, right for your audience, which I think sometimes can be difficult to switch between in an academic versus industry setting as well of like, when do I use what and how do I build the skills in those different spaces? Speaker 6 Right. Yeah. So starting with writing to learn, like, why even writes, right? Like I, I teach 10th graders and 9th graders. I'm currently dragging my 10th graders through a writing unit right now. And I get that question like all the time, like, why are we doing this? Why are we writing? What's the point of it, especially with new technologies? I mean, like what gifts? Why do it right? And I think one of the biggest things, my biggest counterpoints and something very much backed by science is that when you are writing, you are learning. You are putting your learning and your thoughts down on the page or on the screen. And I think as a student, that is so, so important because it's easy to phone it in. I've done classes where I'm not writing, I'm not taking notes, I'm doing the bare minimum, and you just don't learn. You jump through the hoops, but you're not learning as much as you can. And you, especially at the college level, you're paying for these classes. You better learn something from them. So I think writing to learn is a huge, I mean, that's just something that gets overlooked, but it's part of that process. And when you're writing, you're activating your brains, even if it is the most mundane notes, even if you are like working through a report or something like that. When you write, you are learning. And that's important, right, John? What's the last thing you wrote and what did you learn from it? Speaker 8 Oh my goodness, the last thing that I wrote like of any value or I mean I. Speaker 6 All writing, All writing. Speaker 1 Is telling you, John, I don't think you told people what you do. Speaker 8 Ben and I, Well, my primary role at this point is as a collector of weather data. Ben and I Ben and I share a connection that I don't think we've publicly disclosed before. Speaker 6 Yeah, this is this is breaking news. This is if you're about to reveal this on the podcast. Speaker 8 I know this is a real scoop for around the Helix, if I may say, but Ben and I actually both collect data for the citizen science project around precipitation. So we both have a rain gauge and measure precipitation locally. And we do not get paid for this. It is just a hobby. Ben has been doing it much longer than me. Ben introduced me to this world, but I recently was engaged in a collaborative discussion with other members of this community on the best way to measure snowfall under challenging circumstances. And through discussion together and writing out our thoughts, I think we all had a chance to formulate our own views on the best way to make these measurements and provide each other with some feedback and helpful criticism. And in fact, this whole discussion was just a text chain between myself and Ben earlier today. But even in that setting, I think it it could be helpful to get your ideas down and words. I would suggest that perhaps you can't have a thought without using language. Speaker 6 Whoa, that was. Speaker 1 Deep. Speaker 6 Hot take Shadow Kokoras Community Collaborative Rain, Hail and snow Network Quote Because every drop counts. End Quote. Speaker 1 Yeah. Speaker 8 Anyone can join Darcy. You're you should. You should. Speaker 6 Darcy Yeah, they need more reports from your neck of the woods. Speaker 1 I my neck of the woods here in Chisholm, right? Speaker 6 Yeah, I don't want to disclose. Speaker 1 Ben and John nipping in Virginia. You know the iron right here so. Speaker 8 That's the whole thing though. Is this hyperlocal measurements? Speaker 6 Yes, yeah, OK. It was crazy. I measured .51 inches of melt to precipitation today and just north of here they only got .17. It was quite the discrepancy. Wow. And John doesn't measure his until 8:00 PM for some psychotic reason. Speaker 8 No, it's going to be a lot. Speaker 6 So, right to learn, we learned a lot about John through his writing today, and he learned about measurements and tricky whatnot. And you're not going to learn without those writings. And John brings out, I mean, it's funny, but like these, the casual writing moments, you're this, it goes, all writing is helping you learn, right? Like you're writing for academic purposes, you're writing for social purposes. You are learning regardless. And so I think it's important to realize that writing is a tool. It's technology that we take for granted, but it's something that you practice. It's a skill. No one is a natural writer. The natural writers are the ones who are writing all the time because they think they're good at it. It's a self fulfilling prophecy. And if you're an engineer who doesn't like writing, change your minds, mind. Change the mindsets. We're going to have some positive growth mindset shout out Carol Dweck. And we're going to be writers who learn through writing. Speaker 1 Nice. I like it. And I feel like that is a great segue, Ben, to your second point of writing authentically because there are a lot of tools in our world that can write for us now, so. Speaker 6 Yes. Speaker 1 It's quite to be authentic. Speaker 6 You have to be authentic with your writing because writing is the way we communicate with one another through the page or the screen. And you might not realize it, but your voice comes through. And these tools that you can use or misuse also have voices. And those voices aren't yours, right? And I'm not going to say you never should use Chat or Gemini for anything, but these large language models have a distinct voice. And for professors, for people in the workforce, I think it's becoming increasingly obvious what this voice is. And if you're phoning it in and if you're going to try to rely on these tools your entire way, you know, maybe, maybe you can do it. But I think it's risky. And I think especially as if if you're students, this is the time to practice your writing skills and honing your voice. And figuring out what works. And it's, you just have to write authentically. You're not going to be learning if you're using ChatGPT to write for you. And just, yeah, it's just not, it's not great. It's not great. As a teacher, obviously, I've seen a lot. And it just really bums me out that my students think that I want to see that. And I think that there's probably people in the workforce who would feel similarly of like, why? Why are you doing this when I'm asking you for like authentic writing? There's definitely writing where, yeah, if I need to quick send something that is mindless and doesn't you just got to get the job done. Sure. Writing code to get your website to work, Sure, right. Like chats, great. But if you're authentically writing, you should be, it should be coming from the heart and having that voice because it is so disheartening when you have a piece of writing come through that is obviously ChatGPT. And it's like, I don't know, I, I just, I, I try not to judge people, but I, I definitely find myself judging people. This is like adults. These are like my bosses. And I'm like, you're, you can't write like a heartfelt thank you. You're like studied it through like a large language model. Like that's really telling about character. I think writing is a very human. I mean, it's part of what makes us human is this communication and writing is this amazing thing that we're able to do. And so I think writing authentically and just also like, don't let like the tech Bros win. Like don't let them convince you that you can't write for yourself. That drives me crazy. Like that's their business model. Like they it's free right now, but it's not gonna be free forever. People are already paying for like the pro premium versions of these things and it just like drives. It's like what? Like you don't need this, right? Like come on, like, please own it. Keep, don't let them win. Don't give them your money. And yeah, keep writing authentically. Speaker 1 Yeah, love to hear it. It's yeah, Your personality comes through in that. And I think that goes back again to what John was saying in a text message or something like that. You can lose your personality real fast if you're just putting in these produced things that's created by everyone else instead of you. And so whether it is something like a text message or you're submitting a report to your employer for some sort of documentation for a project being on, they want anality to it. So. Speaker 6 Right, John, did you use ChatGPT at all in school or for your resume to get your job? Speaker 8 No, I don't think. I think I was slightly pre ChatGPT times for that. Speaker 6 Do you think you would have? Speaker 8 I think there's be honest, I think there's a time and a place. I think, I think the big thing with ChatGPT from my perspective is that it can be easy. I can see two first for if you're like have all these assignments and trying to get them all done, they can feel like the point is to create a document and that the document is the product that somebody's looking for. When really I feel like a piece of writing. The point is for the reader of the audience to be able to understand the mind of whoever wrote it, the author. So like most of the reading I do is just like, you know, for fun. Like if I were to read a book, it's not that I am all that interested in the content of the text on the page and more than I want to understand the the thoughts and ideas that the author's putting forward. And I feel like the same would be true in a technical document that like, I, I would imagine I've never worked in a technical industry, but I, I would imagine that, you know, they're less interested in just the fact of having a document and more the thought process that went into it and the rationale and reasoning that led to those conclusions. Speaker 1 Yeah, like it. All right. Speaker 6 Right, that brings up I think our Third Point of writing for that audience. And one thing I like to do, I teach this to my students, 9th grade, 10th grade seniors. We talked about this a lot too at the Center for Writers that I worked at. Every piece of writing always has pieces like elements to it, right? You always have a role that you are fulfilling. You might just be writing as yourself, or you might be writing as like, if I'm wearing my teacher hat, Mr. Norman, right? Like, what is my role and who am I writing to? Who's the audience and what are they expecting? And I think this is what sets if you can write authentically and if you are writing to learn and you've got this process that you're working through continuously and just trying to be better and better, this is what's going to set you apart. Because ChatGPT, you can tell it like, here's your role, here's my audience, here's what the format, the topic, the style, and it's going to spit like the the pumpkin spice latte back out, right? Like it's, it's fine, right? It works. This is the idea that I've heard. I like it like it. It's it's it's consumable. It it's not everyone's going to like it, but like, wow, it's crazy that this technology can do it. But like, if all you are getting is pumpkin spice lattes 36524, like it's just, it's going to get to be a lot, especially for your audience. Who if I feel like, if I'm writing a resume right now, the last thing I want to do is like send it through chats or through any computers because that's what a lot of people are doing. And I want mine to be unique. I want it to be good, right? But I really want to like hone my audience and like do my research, figure out who I'm writing to and how do I like make this document, make this resume, make this cover letter as applicable as possible and make it relate to this audience and do my own homework and make it my own voice and make it like distinctly without a question, like 100% human. Because I think right now, I think there's already a backlash happening. I don't know, maybe I'm, I'm trying to manifest it because I'm so sick of chat slop. But like, I think that there is a movement. If it's not starting, it should be starting soon. That if you're writing for your professional audiences, I think people, why would you want someone? Why would I want to hire someone who's dependent on large language models to create some writing, right? Like I want to hire people who are confident in their own writing and can do it the quote UN quote, old fashioned way, along with maybe using these tools to help as you need them to help. But knowing your audience is so key and crucial of all the the elements to the writing, your role, audience, format, topic, style. I think knowing the audience and getting into their head as best as possible, asking follow up questions, doing your homework, doing your research, trying to figure out what makes them click. That's that's key because then you can tailor your message around those audiences needs, right? It's like if it's, you know, fill in the blank, any scenario, you figure out what that audience is, who you're specifically writing to. How do you make those connections? What you lead with? How do you write it? It all comes from the audience. Speaker 1 Yeah, I like that because it also, I think as I've learned from really the last two sections of thinking about how you tailor different parts of a paper for different people too. Because not every person you hand that report or that paper or that memo or whatever to is going to read every single part of it. Like a certain audience is going to read an executive summary versus like a method section. And in these large language models, it's using the same prediction throughout. And so it's going to sound similar in this. It's just predicting what word come next after this other one to put something together versus you thinking about, well, if someone made it to my methods section, I really need to put a lot of detail in there so they can follow it. And so I'm going to use a little bit different tone in that versus something of the executive summary that some person's just walking by and trying to get a gist of what I am saying in this paper versus knowing the details too. Speaker 6 Right. And I think too, talking about integrating sources, showing that like, yeah, professors require like make sure you have six sources, make sure you have a bibliography, reference page, whatever. And it just feels like a hoop to jump through as a student who's written so many essays and reports in my college years. But really the the reason teachers, professors ask you to do this is like, again, doing your homework. It's like when you're doing your math and showing your work, right, you've got anyone can have any ideas, but not many. Or like it takes a little bit more thought and consideration, critical thinking to meld your ideas with the ideas of others in those fields, right? And integrating those sources shows us that you've done your homework, shows us that you've read other people and other scholarship and you quoting and bringing them into your work. I mean, this is how research works, right? You're building upon others who have written before. And also it's just showing me that you're authentic, right? Like you are legit. You're doing it. There is no bigger red flag than reading a report and getting to a quote and being like, wow, that's interesting. And getting to the work cited reference page and finding out that that source doesn't exist, right? Like ChatGPT has gotten way better. It doesn't hallucinate nearly as much, but it still does. Or it'll just pull quotes from things that just if they look good, right? Because chat is all about making things look good. Cuz like you were saying, Darcy, it's a prediction machine. It's a fancy parrot that's it's spitting out what it thinks you want to see, but there's no thought behind it. You are the thinker. You are the human who can think. You're the person who needs to integrate those sources and show us that thinking. Speaker 1 Yeah. Speaker 6 Yeah. Speaker 8 Summary Love it. Speaker 1 Awesome. Well, thanks Ben for summarizing those three points for us. I think those were three strong points to remember as you go throughout the semester with your assignments and also as you deliver any communication to your employer as well. So thanks Ben for joining us. Thanks John for joining us and kicking us off with a very thought provoking get to know you. Speaker 6 Starships are meant to fly. Speaker 1 Thanks everybody for listening. Speaker 6 Goodbye. Speaker 8 Bye. Thank you.