On Being Professional

Our profession is that field of activity for which we assuredly “profess” competence.
Society, for its part, rightly expects that certain standards of technical expertise and conduct will
govern the life of professional people. These standards do not change, make no exceptions,
extend to many aspects of a professional person’s life, receive recognition and rewards when
observed and sanctions when disregarded. We embody them in policies, principles, practices,
skills, and values. Their vital importance behooves us to know them and live them out. Some
organizations specify their expectations of employers and employees in documents that vary in
length from a paragraph to a manual.
Serious as this is, we must not interpret it as harsh and threatening, for we are speaking
here of lofty and attainable standards intended for everyone’s well-being. Professionalism has
about it always a touch of class—it bears something of graciousness and good taste, is pleasing
when encountered, is universally attractive to people of integrity and earns their respect.
With so much expected of us in professional life, it’s helpful to formulate our own code
of workplace principles and ethics with which we can occasionally appraise ourselves.

1. List as bullet points five personal qualities that you expect of people in all professions, and
justify your selection of each quality. 5
 Reliable—employers/public should be able to count on workers to get jobs done.

 Competent—employees must be experts in their field and do their job properly.

 Team-player/communication—employees must get work done regardless of problems

among employee. They must work together to work efficiently.

 Organized—if the employee is disorganized, reliability and competence become

questionable.

 Pride/integrity/identity—employees must be proud of their work. That is the only they

work as efficiently as possible. Pretending to like the work or disliking the work results

in problems.
2. Our profession is the particular field for which we profess competence. List as
bullet points five technical skills essential for proficiently practicing your
profession. 5
 Math and science knowledge, particularly chemistry and physics

 analytical skills

 Knowledge of computers and programming

 Must have utmost precision and communicate work clearly and concisely in spoken and

written terms

 Ability to manage projects, manage people, manage budget, and work as part of a team

3. Write your own workplace code of ethics by listing five personal qualities that
you specifically expect of people in your chosen profession, and give a reason for your
selection of each quality. Don’t include those listed for question 1. 10
 Working to better society and improve the world, not just earn money. Chemical

engineers have one of the most varied skillsets out of engineers, and so many

processes in the world depend on chemical engineers.

 Chemical engineers must be detail oriented and precise. Their work often consists of

mixing chemicals in harsh conditions. Wrong calculations or processes could damage

people and facilities. It’s not dealing with machines and computers—it’s an organic

profession that deals with people.

 They must be calm under pressure and not prone to choking. If a process goes wrong,

the engineer in charge must be calm and determined enough to follow all safety

procedures and make intuitive calls to prevent damage.

 They must be learners. Chemistry and engineering knowledge isn’t set in stone.

Chemical engineers must study all new research, so they can apply new research to

current processes to make them more efficient or more safe.

  They must be teachers. In general, there is a public distaste for or fear of

mathematics, chemistry, and physics for reasons that are too long to discuss here.

This quality is not specific to chemical engineers—it applies to all STEM fields.

Professionals in these fields don’t do enough to dispel myths and fears about their

field, and I reckon math is the biggest offender here. Perhaps it doesn’t help that, I

speculate, most professionals in these fields are introverted people contained within

their own area of like-minded people. Overall, scientists and engineers are the people

most equipped to talk to the public about fears in science and math and about issues

in education.

4. Professional life is not without its dangers. We must be vigilant for signs of growing
confidence in our ability to deceive, all the while flying below the radar. Jails are full of
people who thought like that. Confident that they were smarter than the system, they forgot
about radar systems installed at ground level. In a paragraph of 120 words, draw from a real-
life example of a careless and complacent person or group of people who made the news for
falling into one or more pitfalls like
– Healthy professional pride and self-confidence devolving into arrogance
– Honesty devolving into dishonesty
– Straightforward openness devolving into deviousness
– Planning devolving into scheming
– Diligence devolving into laziness, cutting corners, and carelessness 10

In 2010, a caustic waste reservoir of an alumina plant in Ajkai, Hungary, collapsed, releasing

one billion liters of toxic, red sludge. The sludge flooded nearby towns, farmland, and the

Marcal river, killing four people and injuring about 100 with chemical burns. The Marcal river

carried the toxic waste into the river of Danube, leading into many countries downstream. The

scale of the damage was so massive that Croatia, Serbia, Romania, Slovakia, Bulgaria, and

Ukraine developed emergency plans. The sludge was heavily alkaline with high concentrations

of heavy metals, polluting a distance of 100 km, “[extinguishing]” all life in the Marcal river.

Officials believe the cause was due to human error. As such, the government arrested the
managing director of the alumina plant for “criminal negligence leading to a public catastrophe”

and for operating the plant when its reservoirs had cracks.

Sources:

 Bilefsky, Dan. “Hungary Arrests Official, Citing Role in Red Sludge.” The New York

Times. New York Times, 11 October 2010. Web. 30 May 2016.

 “Hungarian chemical sludge spill reaches Danube.” BBC World. BBC, 7 October 2010.

Web. 30 May 2016.

5. Write in a paragraph of 120 words why a particular person is a role model for you with
regard to their character, ability, and accomplishments. If you don’t want to disclose the
name of the person about whom you are writing, use a fictitious name. The person may or
may not be famous, may be a friend, a relative, a coach… If life has really let you down and
no one you know or know about inspires you, invent your ideal role model. 10

Edward Frenkel is a Russian professor of mathematics at University of California, Berkeley.

He is also an author of the book Love and Math. He is a role model for me in education and in

professional conduct. I was looking for Calculus 3 lectures when I discovered that UC Berkeley

had put his lectures on Youtube. I have been watching his lectures and videos since. I’ve

always been interested in teaching and tutoring, and along with that, I’ve been interested in the

history of education in the US, and Edward Frenkel gave me insight and inspiration on those

topics. He talks about the stagnant math curriculum in the US, particularly in high schools, and

about the fear people have for math. I want to help fix that problem by tutoring while I’m in

university. As a chemical engineer, I want to expose scientific ideas to people in an accessible

way.
6. Write carefully – use this checklist to help with editing
___ Typos
___ Spelling errors including hyphenated words
___ Slips of the eye
___ Page layout glitches
___ Problems with coherence (ideas, sentences, and paragraphs flowing naturally and
logically)
___ Verbosity
___ Copy the writersdiet.com bar graph analysis of your work and paste it at the end of
your assignment.
10
Total 50