The Quiet Years

Days turned into weeks. Weeks into months. Months into years.

The long, stable decades passed quickly—not in a blur, but in a rhythm. The work, the colleagues, the daily routines. Projects started and completed. Problems solved and new ones appearing to take their place. Engineers came and went, some staying years, others moving on to greener pastures.

I remained.

Not because I lacked ambition. Not because I couldn't imagine doing anything else. But because this work, this place, this community of problem-solvers—it fit me. It suited the way my mind worked, the way I approached challenges, the way I found satisfaction in the careful unraveling of mysteries.

Yet in the midst of all this, a subtle shift was taking place.

I was moving, slowly and without quite realizing it, from simply doing the work to understanding that I had something to share. A deep well of knowledge that others might need. Lessons learned through years of trial and error, success and failure, patient observation and sudden insight.

The question was not whether I had something to teach. The question was who would want to learn.

In my twenty-five years at ST Electronics, I had only two true apprentices. Not for lack of opportunity. A few showed passing interest. But sustained engagement? The kind that transforms casual learning into deep mastery?

Only two.

One was a sixty-year-old engineer. The other was a young engineer half his age. They could not have been more different—in age, in experience, in life stage. But both, in their own ways, inherited pieces of what I had to offer.

Teaching isn't just about transferring knowledge. It's about witnessing. About seeing the spark catch on in another person and letting them know you've seen it.