Take a good long look at the ChE mirror


 Bathala ng ChE matematika, common sense at stamina, saniban mo ako!

As someone studying in chemical engineering, balancing is one of the things that we in our field are expected to be good at. “Give me a fully defined system, and a set of significant relationships and we’ll make sure that the net rate of the in-going and outgoing streams of resources (e.g. materials, money, heat and work) will all equate to zero.” That’s basically one of the highlights of being in chemical engineering, you get to know where everything comes and goes, and how a change in a certain aspect can affect the system’s entirety including the important streams affected by the change. The result can come as a spectrum of two simple outcomes: Will it lead to an improvement, or will it lead to a catastrophe (and a lot of resources down the drain)?

Accountability. Balance. Consistency. If there are any words that stuck to my head the greatest while answering problem after problem in Chemical Engineering calculations, it’s these three.

My bff (Perry's ChE Handbook), right beside my main life source (coffee)
Yet a bit of self-reflection dawned on me lately, and I took a break from thinking about the many ways on how to attack problems for a bit. Accountability, balance and consistency – these concepts that I’ve mentioned should not only play as protagonists in our calculation sheets and pen-defiled scratch papers. You don’t only need these three when looking for an unknown quantity, you actually do still need these concepts in maintaining our sanity and relationships inside and outside the four walls of the classroom (or office).

Accountability.

The sum of the entering streams must be equal to the sum of the outgoing streams.” In balancing systems, the Law of Conservation of Mass and Energy, or the basic mathematical and physical laws still apply and under no circumstances are they to be broken, unless you want to be given the stinky eye by one of your professors (Haha. Hello stalking ma’ams and sirs).

To be accountable, means to know where these resources are heading in and heading out. I assume that all of us have goals, right? In achieving those goals, we have a list of things that we need to do to achieve them: habits we need to break, bad behavior we need to fix, and a lot of discipline to hustle and not be negligent. But sometimes, we get so caught up in the middle of doing the things we’re doing that we sometimes forget the reason why we are doing these things in the first place. What do you want to improve on? Which parts of yourself are holding you back? Pick up a pen and list them down. Prioritize what is important and cut off the non-essentials.

Be accountable in your habits. Like a person who wants to lose weight to be healthier, we need to keep reprimanding ourselves whenever we lose sight of the goal. If losing weight means to lay off the junk food, not eat too much rice, to not indulge too much in soft drinks and beer, then do so.

Be accountable in your behavior. We’re humans, we make mistakes, but sometimes, other people get hurt by those mistakes. In this case, acknowledge what you did and apologize. You cannot change what happened but you can change that behavior so that it won't happen again.

Balance.

Life is really just one huge balancing act. An ass hat becomes an ass hat if he or she continues to stay rigid in his or her ways and not make room to unlearn things that are not serving them anymore. One’s happiness and inner peace should be a priority, not something one should put off in the name of chasing after money, or a better future, because it's not worth it if it comes at the expense of your own physical and mental health.

Balance work and play. You are not here in this world just to pay bills and die. While I know that it’s a lot easier said than done, take time to breathe and treat yourself, and to do this, you don't have to spend thousands of dollars. You can always jog, get some sun, do some stretches, take a walk in the park or take some time off from being a slave to the system. 

Acknowledge that you are human and that you need rest, and that your self-worth is not based on how useful you are to society. 

I’m not saying that people should just abandon their duties in the name of living their lives. I’m just saying that people ought to start mastering the art of balance.

Balance pleasure and pain. While I’m all up for hustling in the name of financial stability and a brighter future, I do not promote Masochism. I’m sure some parts of being a masochist has its own faulty advantages. 


Maybe people are masochists because they use their own discomfort to rationalize their feelings of guilt. They derive pleasure in knowing that they are in pain, and they’re less likely to guilt-trip themselves of being ineffective at something because they are in pain (I’ve been studying non-stop for more than 48 hours without rest, if I do rest, it might mean that I am a lazy person). Sometimes people even use this for their own sense of entitlement (Hello? I’ve been studying for more than 48 hours, you go do that, I know that’s supposed to be my job but I’m tired and I don’t want to do that for you). There’s a thin line between burning yourself out, and using that burn-out to be an emotionally manipulative jerk. 

Nobody asked you to do that thing 48 hours straight without taking health breaks, Kaitlyn (P. S. Don’t be a Kaitlyn).

Consistency.

The units of the left side of the equation should match the right side of the equation.” I cannot elaborate how often I’ve applied this rule in solving many engineering mathematical problems. You’d know something is fishy when the left side in your equation is in lbf – ft while on the right side, it’s in psi.

I used to be really annoyed when I couldn’t get past the consistency of units during my early college days, and my grades couldn’t get around it due to the meticulousness of our professors at that time. Now I look back, and I’m thankful for our profs’ meticulousness. You know who you guys are. Bahala na ug hapit ma-tres ang grado sa eksam basta naay nakat-unan (Doesn’t matter if my grade in the exam is nearing a 3.0 as long as I learned something).

Like how consistent I, as an engineering student, should be in the units I use, I should be as consistent or even more so, in real life. How though? By matching what I say with what I do. In other words, I need to walk my talk. (You call yourself a queen, Roxanne Marie? Then act like it).

Consistency is attractive. In fact, it’s often considered a turn-on. I mean who would want to be with anyone whose actions don’t match their words, right? You don’t have to be knighted by a monarch just to be a decent person or a man/woman of honor. You just really have to stick to your values and as much as possible, not waiver in them.

Now all of this is really way too easy to say and hard to do, but all of us need to start somewhere. Starting is the hard part, but it gets easier. 

“Everyday, it gets easier... but we gotta do it everyday. That’s the hard part.”


- Bojack Horseman S02, E01

One precaution though. When dealing with people or life in general, do take what I say with a grain of salt. A realization that I’ve come up is that you cannot use the same algorithm, the same set of equations, or the same approach in dealing with people (or in dealing with life, in general). Based on experience, dealing with people are far trickier than all the problem-solving exercises I’ve answered in ChE, and it’s because people are not directly governed by any rigid set of rules, thus dealing with them isn’t as simple as following the GRSA protocol (Given – Required – Solution – Answer).

That’s not how people work. Heck, that’s not how life works, but good luck to all of us.

Let's all keep  holding on to the faith, okay?

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