11 Learning Along the Way

When I started at the UA, I began as a mechanical engineering major. The College of Engineering organized tours of all the engineering disciplines to help students see the available options, so I went to a talk on chemical engineering: I found the material dreadfully boring — no offense to those pursuing chemistry or chemical engineering. To me, studying the design of chemical production plants wasn’t overly exciting. Afterwards, on a whim, I followed a crowd of students to a talk at the College of Optical Sciences. There were lasers, lenses, cameras, solar panels, and LEDs. It was riveting! Learning how camera systems work and hearing the principles behind lasers producing photons was something new and fascinating.

Of course, you’re listening to someone whose inspiration to go into engineering was prompted by a conversation at the age of 16 about the mechanics of an umbrella. This seemingly mundane and silly conversation was with my great-uncle — a mechanical engineer and inventor. There were so many aspects to consider when designing such a seemingly simple device: the motion of the levers, calculations for all of the forces and torques, material properties, and ergonomics to boot. These were all aspects of design and engineering that I hadn’t fully considered before. This conversation made me realize that I love understanding how things work and why they are designed in the way that they are.

I waited a little while to officially switch my major to Optical Sciences, hindered by partial laziness and hereditary indecisiveness. This eventually set me back on coursework by an entire year, which was discouraging, but it was better than being in a major that didn’t captivate me.

The Optics major pushed me to learn lots of skills that would later allow me to be a well-rounded engineer. Practical application of the curriculum was constant: programming homework most nights, 3D modeling lenses and mechanics, group laboratory projects, and frequently giving presentations on the material. I was beginning to gain an understanding of the underlying science and how to apply it. Optics classes would often include calculating laser beam propagation, while labs required knowledge of the theory so students could practice applying it. My lab mates and I would work together to align lasers through apertures smaller than the diameter of a human hair. All of this information and practice would surely prepare me for any job interview or experience in the working world, I naïvely thought.

But my first job interview at the end of undergrad was a disaster. I confused simple lens equations, drew common diagrams backwards, and completely failed at demonstrating any ability to work hands-on with laboratory equipment. This experience was disheartening after years of hard work, long nights of studying, and countless lens design software crashes. It was the kind of interview where you forget everything and your brain shuts down.

Even though it was painful and embarrassing at the time, instead of letting that experience get me down, I tried to use it as an opportunity to reset my intentions and my mindset. During undergrad I did well in classes, but I was in a “just get the work done” mentality, instead of trying to really learn and enjoy the material. I was missing the inspiring conversations that drove my aspirations to become an engineer, like the conversation with my great uncle so many years before. Weeks before the disastrous interview, I had been accepted into the Master’s program at the College of Optics and I now saw that as a good opportunity to try to determine how and what I wanted to learn. I wanted to get back to understanding “how things work.”

I chose as my master’s research advisor a professor who emphasized applications-based learning. We would talk for hours through practical uses for all of the principles that were being discussed in courses and he even taught a class that people fondly referred to as the “Take It Apart” class. In that class, students would dissect optical devices, like a camera, a zoom lens, a fingerprint scanner, and so on and discuss why all of the design decisions were made and what the purpose of each component was.

These types of experiences, along with hands-on laboratory research I did, and long conversations with my advisor — in which we dissected the material — were transformative. A lot of experiences that I had in classes up to that point were heavily theory based, with each lecture running through how all of the mathematical principles were derived by the great minds of the optics world. Application-based learning, on the other hand, actually let us put our knowledge to the test with projects that simulated real-world engineering problems. This learning solidified topics that I was exposed to in classes, refined my ability to code and model, and honed my presentation skills. None of this would have been possible without my desire to actually learn — rather than just get the work done — and without engaging in conversations with classmates and mentors.

In my professional career as an optical engineer, I like to describe what I do at my job as “Adult Legos.” I get to build all of the pieces into the final products that my company produces — they are called “interferometers” and they are a little more complex than an umbrella. It isn’t just about piecing together the lenses with the mechanics and electronics and software, it’s also about combining all of the experiences that I have had along the way and understanding how they allowed me to grow. Through path changes, false summits, failures, and revivals I get to take all of the pieces of knowledge and conversations from classes, internships, labs, student groups, intramural sports, and even horrendous interviews and assemble these learning experiences into a knowledge base that I can apply to build physical products. Through each conversation and each experience, I’m starting to understand how things work and I’m getting an opportunity to make design decisions on my own. I hope that I can help inspire the next generation of optical engineers through these conversations. Finding joy in majors and professions is, for me, about the excitement of sharing and learning with each other.

About the author

name: Daniel Millstone

Daniel Millstone graduated from the College of Optical Sciences with his bachelor’s degree in 2014 and continued on to achieve his master’s degree. During his time at the UA, he interned for the OSIRIS-REx space mission, was active in numerous intramural sports, and had the chance to study abroad in Taiwan. Daniel now works as Senior Optical Engineer and Product Manager at 4D Technology, where he began as an intern during graduate school. He still thinks fondly of his time at the University, where Daniel would often convene with friends on the grass hill near the Student Union.