David Schmitt, BS’81. Senior Project Engineer
My story is about the benefit of career counseling at U-M and developing good analytic and writing skills.As an undergrad, I was getting an Astronomy degree, and finally realized at the beginning of my senior year, that I did not want to pursue Astronomy in grad school and at the end of my senior year I would be unemployable. My next stop was career counseling. I explained my dilemma and we sat down to see what Master’s programs Michigan had that interested me and were a match with all the math and physics I took as an undergrad. I selected Aerospace engineering and it changed my life. I loved the grad school, the instructors, the classes, and found my calling. I got my Master’s in Aero and started with a company that met my personality and have been here happily for almost 32 years. I think critical to that was realizing I do not have the personality to be a manager. It does not interest me at all. And my company has a dual career path; one for those who want to pursue management and one for those who do not. I did use my Aero education directly for many years as I was doing orbital analysis for my company. I now work as an engineering liaison between various agencies and my analytic and writing skills are critical to my daily work. My math classes were critical to developing my analytic skills. And I still have and use the Strunk and White book one of my Astronomy teachers required we use to improve our writing skills. Every engineer has to be able to write and communicate. In fact, communication skills is one of the criteria in our annual reviews!
At a party with my sister and daughters
