Engineering, Creativity, and the Dance of Life: A Father's Journey

I’ve been blessed to be a father to two wonderful children. They are two years apart, and my oldest is already a sophomore in college. My youngest is about to graduate high school this year. I often say that my baby birds are flying around the nest now, getting braver and venturing further away. It’s both a time of wonder for them and one of reflection for my partner and me.

Raising children is not an easy task. It’s one of the toughest jobs you’ll ever do, but it’s also the most rewarding—at least for me.

As both of them step into adulthood, our conversations about life and what it means to grow up have changed over the years. Their questions have become harder to answer because life isn’t always black or white—sometimes, it’s more nuanced. They’ve learned that there aren’t always hard and fast answers and that actions have consequences.

Sometimes, I feel less like a father and more like a wise elder trying to impart my wisdom before they leave the nest for good.

Recently, I shared some of that wisdom with my daughter. Always creative and artistic, she went off to a design college and chose a major that bridges technology and the creative arts. She’s surrounded by a community of designers, engineers, and technologists—and she loves every minute of it. She has embraced her studies and is excelling beyond our—and her—wildest dreams.

While all this makes me proud, it’s the long discussions we’ve had over the years that I cherish the most. Those conversations made me think back to when I was 18, trying to figure out what I wanted to study. I remember being called into my high school guidance counselor’s office to talk about my future career goals.

Career goals? I hardly knew my ass from my elbow back then. How the hell was I supposed to know what I wanted to do for the rest of my life? I was good at math and science and thought airplanes were cool, so my guidance counselor suggested Aerospace Engineering. I had no idea what that was, but “Engineering” sounded interesting, so I applied to several colleges that offered engineering programs.

When I finally selected my engineering school, I had to pick a major. I couldn’t decide, so I started as undeclared. A few months into my studies, I settled on Civil Engineering.

The next five years of my life were hell. Engineering school is hard. I worked part-time, commuted to school, and studied my ass off. After finals, I felt like death warmed over, and would sleep for days. This intensity never let up—it consumed my life.

It even bled into my social life. On Friday nights, my friends and I would gather at someone’s house to hang out and have a few beers. I would stay for a bit and then leave around 10:30 PM because I had to wake up early on Saturday to study before heading to my part-time job.

My friends would laugh and poke fun at me. Leaving at 10:30 PM on a Friday night became known as “Half-past Ott.” It bugged me at the time, but now? It doesn’t mean a damn thing anymore because I’m an engineer.

Last semester, my daughter called me crying. She had taken on a heavier workload than recommended and was drowning in work. As a design major, she doesn’t have mid-terms or finals—just projects. She would come up with designs only to have her professor shoot them down. She worked day and night, sometimes pulling all-nighters multiple times a week. Occasionally, she would call me from the computer lab, waiting for her work to render.

She asked me if I had worked as hard when I was in college. I told her yes—and that it would only get harder—but reassured her that she would be okay.

I told her that there are three types of people in the world: those who make things happen, those who talk about what happened, and those who say, “What happened?”

I said that engineers, creatives, designers, makers, and tinkerers are the machine that moves the world. We are the motor. We are called to be the ones who make things happen. The cost of that calling? Hard work, perseverance, persistence, and sacrifice.

I told her that she was one of those people who make things happen and that she owed it to herself to push through and come out stronger on the other side.

My professional life changed in 2014 when I took a job as a Sales Engineer at a startup in Boston. I had never worked in AI before, but I knew how to make things work. I worked my ass off learning machine learning and data science. I spent all my waking hours finding and reading research articles, trying to grasp this new field. Just like my engineering studies, it was hard—but I stuck with it and learned it.

Engineering not only taught me how to think critically, but it also taught me how to figure things out, how to stick with them, and how to ask for help.

We often hear that life is a journey rather than a destination. I tend to disagree with both of those points—I believe life is more like a dance or akin to playing music. We’re called to move and play our way through life. Sometimes, we switch up dance partners or change the tune, but I don’t want to believe my life is a straight line from birth to death.

If life is a journey, I want mine to be a squiggly line, veering down crooked paths, hitting dead ends, and finding new ways forward. I want to explore while the music plays and lead my partner onto the dance floor.

And if my children take anything from me, I hope it’s this: The path may be difficult, the hours long, and the work exhausting—but in the end, those who create, who build, who persist, are the ones who truly shape the world.

And that, I believe, is a life and world worth dancing through.

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