Blog 22: Mentorship

Literal

• See side of blog
• Mentor contact 
• http://www.earthtekeng.com/
• Earth Tek Engineering
• 909-393-2000
• Tom Chavez (mentor)
• 714 412-4017
• thoschv@msn.com

 Interpretive

     What is the most important thing you gained from this experience? Why?

My time at Earth Tek Engineering was amazing. It was such an experience to see the construction world first hand. I learned lots of things in my time there but nothing impacted me as much as sitting in on real life construction meetings. It was so amazing to see all the things i researched in practice. During these meetings arguments over contract disputes took place and almost every single factor in construction and argued over the table. It was hard to keep up with all the terms but i was able to observe construction at its most involved level. Almost all of the staff was present at these disputes and every member had their own knowledge to contribute. THe fact that I was able to see all elements of grading at once and how they interacted made it the most amazing experience of my senior project. Being able to sit in and understand was the culmination of months of hard work.

   Applied

     How has what you’ve done helped you to answer your EQ?  Please explain.

My mentorship was my primary source for answering my EQ, What is the most important factor in ensuring a profit in a grading operation? My work there has helped in in so many ways. Discussions with my mentor helped me define terms and overcome obstacles such as lack of sources. Talking with my mentor helped me come up with my eq and my three best answers. Tom was there the whole time to help me and  guide me in my research. My mentorship also provided me a great place to learn about grading and focus my project. I was able to work with various employees in various sections of the company giving me a broad sampling. My mentorship also allowed me to comb through their old construction reports which was essential to answering my EQ. By looking through what went wrong in various old jobs and dissecting the various factors I was able to accurately answer my EQ with primary sources. I was able to look at how factors affected construction profit first hand. The work at my mentorship gave my EQ answer so much more depth and validity.