Mentoring engineering students: Turning pebbles into diamonds

Journal of Engineering Education, Jul 2001 by Vesilind, P Aarne

VII. EPILOGUE

There is a lovely story in one of the Chicken Soup for the Soul books.13 It goes like this:

One night a group of nomads were preparing to retire for the evening when suddenly theywere surrounded by a great light. They knew they were in the presence of a celestial being. With great anticipation, they awaited a heavenly message ofgreat importance that they knew must be especially for them.

Finally, the voice spoke.

Gather as many pebbles as you can. Put them in your saddle bags. Travel a day's journey and tomorrow night will find you glad and it will find you sad.

After the light departed, the nomads shared their disappointment and anger with each other. They had expected the revelation of a great universal truth that would enable them to create wealth, health and purpose for the world. But instead they were given a menial task that made no sense to them at all. However, the memory of the brilliance of their visitor caused each one to pick up a few pebbles and deposit them in their saddle bags while voicing their displeasure.

They traveled a day's journey and that night while making camp, the reached into their saddle bags and discovered every pebble they had gathered had become a diamond. They were glad they had diamonds. They were sad they had not gathered more pebbles.

Our job as professors is to encourage our students to fill their saddlebags with pebbles, and we hope they all turn into diamonds.

*An earlier form of this paper was presented at the Graduate Research Education and Teaching Symposium, University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center, Oklahoma City, 1998, and published in the Research Integrity, a newsletter of the Michigan State University.

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