Interviews

Both my interviews were conducted a bit late and through email. My academic interviewee was
Dr. Akihiko Kumagai, an associate professor at Sacramento State University. I chose him because he is also the advisor for the Formula SAE race car team. His work and knowledge most likely are the closest to what career I'm investigating. My other interviewee, Eric Ingraham, is the logistics manager/engineer at the race team I work for, Flying Lizard Motorsports. While not exactly the position I would choose, he is an engineer that has moved outside of design onto other engineering related areas, which is what I would like to do.

As I said before, both interviews were conducted via email. Dr. Kumagai's was a bit short, but I think that has a lot to do with the language barrier. English is definitely not his first language, but he does do a lot of reading and writing on the job. He is a professor, so that involves a lot anyway. Somewhere between 60 and 70% of his time is what he said he spent either reading or writing. Eric's answers were very similar in that respect. As far what they do read and write, Eric's time is mostly spent dealing with rules, checking the validity of press releases before the go out, budget issues, and a ton of other emails throughout the day. Dr. Kumagai said he spent most of his time working on technical papers, preparing for classes, or answering school related emails. It seems that no matter what you do now-a-days, you must be writing or responding to emails during your work day.