Something wild to me is that, in a year and a half of just bouncing around between projects as a consultant, it feels like I’ve learned almost as much as I did in my six-ish years employed at my previous job.
Maybe I haven’t learned as much in terms of sheer volume, but I’ve learned so much more that is practical, and on so many topics. It’s because I have to solve all the problems myself.
I don’t have a small team of other aero engineers to ask questions of. And my tools are limited too! CFD is generally absurdly expensive, either in money ($10k+ for a year’s license) or time (figuring out how to use open-source tools). These days, I can’t exactly smash the easy button of CFD to get answers the way I could before.
So I get creative. I use the tools I have: inviscid codes like vortex lattice and panel methods, and textbooks from the 1940s. And I do a lot of thinking and research.
And the result? Going the consultant route has turned out to be a really great accelerator for my own learning.
For example, how do you even size ailerons? I definitely didn’t learn that anywhere. I adventured through the internet and my textbook library to figure it out. And then I had to think about how to validate my chosen method. (It was actually pretty fun.)
Necessity is the mother of invention. Because I’m solo, I get to find the solutions myself. Note I didn’t say I “have” to. I get to.
Any individual project is similar. When you have a clear goal in mind and you’re the one driving to that goal, it’s amazing how far you’ll go to learn what you need to know.
If you want to be able to play a specific song on the guitar, you’ll source the educational resources you need. Trying to program an Arduino to do something niche? You’ll dig through the depths of the internet for the tips someone posted in 2018 on a now-defunct forum.
Independent consulting is just a higher-stakes version of this, because you’re getting paid for a service. But it’s still self-driven because you genuinely want to serve your clients. You’re improving your own learning and benefitting yourself as an expert in your field, but ALSO boosting your business and its capabilities. You’re both doing a project, and working on your own project: your business.
So if you want to learn how to do something? Make a project out of it. Set a clear end result, something that you would really enjoy having done. There are no wrong choices here; if you want to learn to paint so you can replicate Van Gogh’s The Starry Night, have at it.
And if you’re a consultant like me, remember that your business is that project. All the problems you solve don’t benefit just your clients, but you and your business too. Every experience you have becomes another little nugget to keep in your back pocket.
And when you’re able to pull those nuggets out and show your potential clients that this isn’t your first rodeo? They’ll know you’re the real deal.