About Me
I’m Sharon Grimshaw, Class of 2015 at Olin College. I self-defined my major in Human-Centered Design Engineering. In plainspeak, I’m the person who figures out the right product to build and then organizes the team to build it. It certainly took me a while to figure out how my skills and interests fit into the engineering field, and it is the goal of this set of reflections to share some of that journey with you.
To understand where I’m coming from, you first need a bit of background on Olin. Olin College is a tiny, fully undergraduate college with only 350 students in Needham, MA. I will be in the tenth graduating class. Everyone who graduates from Olin is an engineer, but Olin does engineering a little different than your traditional technical school. With a heavy emphasis on project-based classes and teaming experiences, Olin prepares students to be social engineers who are ready to take on risks and who know how to work well with others. By focusing on interdisciplinary classes and real-world situations, Olin forces students to work with people from very different backgrounds and with very different goals. Finally, with a 50-50 male-female gender breakdown, Olin supports and encourages women to pursue engineering projects that are just as technically challenging as their male counterparts.
I don’t know if I would have been an engineer if I didn’t go to Olin. I came because of the culture fit – everybody was working hard but seemed overall to be happy. Students were passionate about classes, projects, and extracurriculars and I wanted the same college experience. Professors built lasting connections with students and classes were geared towards teaching students how to learn as opposed to the material itself. Since everybody at Olin is an engineer, the degree in engineering was necessary if I wanted the culture. I didn’t anticipate finding an engineering concentration that resonated so closely with what I believe is important – human connection. But you can read more about that in my reflections.
Outside of classes at Olin, I have done anthropology/design research with Drs. Lynn Andrea Stein and Caitrin Lynch, participated in numerous co-curriculars such as Bread-making and Olin History, given tours to both prospective students and visiting professors, helped with the faculty candidate search, sat on various committees like the Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences committee and the North Hill – Olin College Fund for Innovation in Aging Advisory Board, and even learned how to work with and blow glass. This is all in addition to my exploits in class building robotic koalas, churro-making machines, better course registration sites, email-notification home décor, and laser-cut butterfly greeting cards.
To understand where I’m coming from, you first need a bit of background on Olin. Olin College is a tiny, fully undergraduate college with only 350 students in Needham, MA. I will be in the tenth graduating class. Everyone who graduates from Olin is an engineer, but Olin does engineering a little different than your traditional technical school. With a heavy emphasis on project-based classes and teaming experiences, Olin prepares students to be social engineers who are ready to take on risks and who know how to work well with others. By focusing on interdisciplinary classes and real-world situations, Olin forces students to work with people from very different backgrounds and with very different goals. Finally, with a 50-50 male-female gender breakdown, Olin supports and encourages women to pursue engineering projects that are just as technically challenging as their male counterparts.
I don’t know if I would have been an engineer if I didn’t go to Olin. I came because of the culture fit – everybody was working hard but seemed overall to be happy. Students were passionate about classes, projects, and extracurriculars and I wanted the same college experience. Professors built lasting connections with students and classes were geared towards teaching students how to learn as opposed to the material itself. Since everybody at Olin is an engineer, the degree in engineering was necessary if I wanted the culture. I didn’t anticipate finding an engineering concentration that resonated so closely with what I believe is important – human connection. But you can read more about that in my reflections.
Outside of classes at Olin, I have done anthropology/design research with Drs. Lynn Andrea Stein and Caitrin Lynch, participated in numerous co-curriculars such as Bread-making and Olin History, given tours to both prospective students and visiting professors, helped with the faculty candidate search, sat on various committees like the Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences committee and the North Hill – Olin College Fund for Innovation in Aging Advisory Board, and even learned how to work with and blow glass. This is all in addition to my exploits in class building robotic koalas, churro-making machines, better course registration sites, email-notification home décor, and laser-cut butterfly greeting cards.
Finding Myself - Who Am I?
Student. Sister. Performer. Leader. All of these words describe who I think I am. There is one underlying thread that connects all of these words together – they are all in relation to other people. All of the ways that I define myself ultimately are titles given to me by others. Generally when we think about identity and self it is separate from others, but I would argue that we can never be separate. The only way to understand yourself is to make connections to those around you and let them tell you who you are.
This was a realization I came to during my time at Olin – that my self-definition comes from others besides myself. It took some getting used to. I spent a period of time during my freshman year struggling to figure out who I was, struggling to differentiate who I was from who everyone else thought I was. I came to the conclusion that I was comfortable being defined by others, especially if I was defining others at the same time. I have always developed deep connections with a few select people around me so in my mind it makes a lot of sense to let those special others define me. That being said, I do have a sense of who I am that guides me to the types of people who I want to let define me. So, instead of choosing the titles that define me I choose the people who give me those titles.
Student. A title that is given to me just because I go to college, but also something that describes the stage I occupy in life, the experiences I have had thus far, and the way I think. When I describe myself as a student, I am trying to show that I am eager to learn but also recognize that I don't know everything. As I transition out of college I don't think I will drop this title, even if I am no longer identified as a student by others.
Sister. Not a title I had a choice about, but one that has nonetheless shaped the way that I view the world and how the world views me. I got it when I was two, and since then I have considered it my personal responsibility to protect my little sister from anything and everything and to support her as she grows. We seem very similar to others (we both are musicians, engineers, leaders) which happens because we grew up in the same supportive household, but we are not the same. We are sisters.
Performer. I was given this title by the tens of thousands of people I have played my fiddle for, but it also describes how I approach life. Until I decide that you are one of my trusted few, I show you what you want to see. I entertain you, just as I entertain the people who come to watch my fiddle performances.
Leader. A title that has been coming up more and more recently. It started early in my life almost accidentally - if you're the soloist on stage (even if you're nine years old) you have to lead the people accompanying you. It became more obvious when I took on more defined roles like stage manager and softball catcher in high school. It hit me in college that it was what I really enjoyed doing, when I began project managing on teams and decided to pursue product management after graduation.
Just as it’s challenging to know who I am as a person since I don’t know what it is possible for me to be, it is also hard to know what we want as consumers, as users. If we haven’t seen a product before, how do we know that we want it? How do we even know it’s possible to have it? This is why we leave product definition in the hands of those a little removed from our own lives, yet who still have taken the time to synthesize our needs and desires as well as the needs and desires of others around us. We think we know ourselves but we inherently limit what is possible by thinking of past experiences. I, as a designer, want to lean on the experiences of others and create what people don’t even think to dream about. But I think the only way for me to create these experiences is to rely on others, as a rely on them to define myself.
This was a realization I came to during my time at Olin – that my self-definition comes from others besides myself. It took some getting used to. I spent a period of time during my freshman year struggling to figure out who I was, struggling to differentiate who I was from who everyone else thought I was. I came to the conclusion that I was comfortable being defined by others, especially if I was defining others at the same time. I have always developed deep connections with a few select people around me so in my mind it makes a lot of sense to let those special others define me. That being said, I do have a sense of who I am that guides me to the types of people who I want to let define me. So, instead of choosing the titles that define me I choose the people who give me those titles.
Student. A title that is given to me just because I go to college, but also something that describes the stage I occupy in life, the experiences I have had thus far, and the way I think. When I describe myself as a student, I am trying to show that I am eager to learn but also recognize that I don't know everything. As I transition out of college I don't think I will drop this title, even if I am no longer identified as a student by others.
Sister. Not a title I had a choice about, but one that has nonetheless shaped the way that I view the world and how the world views me. I got it when I was two, and since then I have considered it my personal responsibility to protect my little sister from anything and everything and to support her as she grows. We seem very similar to others (we both are musicians, engineers, leaders) which happens because we grew up in the same supportive household, but we are not the same. We are sisters.
Performer. I was given this title by the tens of thousands of people I have played my fiddle for, but it also describes how I approach life. Until I decide that you are one of my trusted few, I show you what you want to see. I entertain you, just as I entertain the people who come to watch my fiddle performances.
Leader. A title that has been coming up more and more recently. It started early in my life almost accidentally - if you're the soloist on stage (even if you're nine years old) you have to lead the people accompanying you. It became more obvious when I took on more defined roles like stage manager and softball catcher in high school. It hit me in college that it was what I really enjoyed doing, when I began project managing on teams and decided to pursue product management after graduation.
Just as it’s challenging to know who I am as a person since I don’t know what it is possible for me to be, it is also hard to know what we want as consumers, as users. If we haven’t seen a product before, how do we know that we want it? How do we even know it’s possible to have it? This is why we leave product definition in the hands of those a little removed from our own lives, yet who still have taken the time to synthesize our needs and desires as well as the needs and desires of others around us. We think we know ourselves but we inherently limit what is possible by thinking of past experiences. I, as a designer, want to lean on the experiences of others and create what people don’t even think to dream about. But I think the only way for me to create these experiences is to rely on others, as a rely on them to define myself.