Changing for the better

Though change might be stressful, it often can lead to bigger and better opportunities.

By Amara Rozgus, Editor-in-Chief August 31, 2016

One of the most stressful and difficult things humans deal with is change. Many psychological experts indicate the most stressful events adults experience include death, imprisonment, injury, losing a job, and retirement. There are a few other items on the list; fortunately, only one of them is directly related to work.

Luckily, being an engineer doesn’t fall in the top-10 list of most stressful jobs, which includes positions like police and firefighters, airline pilots, event planners, and various military personnel. “Senior corporate executive”—which is a vague description—does appear on the top 10 list, and that broad title might include some of you reading this.

Starting in July, we’ve had a changing of the guard, with five of our most trusted editorial advisory board members leaving the board. Some are retiring (I’d like to hear how stressful that really is … it seems like it shouldn’t be) while others have moved up in their company and are passing the torch to colleagues. The Consulting-Specifying Engineer team extends a special thank you to these dedicated professionals: Anil Ahuja, Keith Lane, Kenneth Lovorn, Michael Mar, and Gerald Versluys. Each of them will be sorely missed for their extensive expertise and experience as well as for the direct impact they’ve had in shaping the content provided in print and online.

While we cannot avoid change, we can certainly look at it from a positive angle and make the most of new opportunities. For example, one of the exiting board members indicated that he and his family were sad to move away from their home state, but they were looking forward to living in a new area—which is very trendy right now—and enjoying a different part of the country. A retiring board member is neck-deep in renovating an eventual retirement house and is using his technical knowledge in a completely different way. And a new dad is happy to have one large responsibility off his plate, which has been replaced by a more exciting and exhausting responsibility.

Change can be stressful, or it can be an opportunity. The engineering industry as a whole is slowly changing, and the new board members will help guide us in that change.