Arshah2 Blog

My voices project was about the identity crises that many immigrants face due to the often conflicting ideas they are subjected to, whether they relate to food, objectives, ideals, work, relationships, or more broadly, general culture. My voices project focused on the difficulty immigrants have on building an identity based on their personality due to a lack of identification with role models as well as a fundamental confusion as to what it means to be multicultural. As an immigrant myself who likes to think that I’ve found my own identity as a multicultural person, reading these stories, particularly the blog posts from the point of view of other immigrants as well as my base text: The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri, really helped me to question what it was that allowed me to develop my own identity and how it is maybe not as clear as I once thought. A Second influential idea I learned from my research was that immigrants often have difficulty assimilating to new cultures because they lack people to identify with, or they don’t know who to identify with. One of the most influential blog posts I read was about a woman who was struggling at work because she couldn’t figure out whether to try and identify more with the white people she worked with, or with people from a same ethnocultural background. Learning to let go of “types” of people and to look for basic character: integrity, honesty, and accountability allowed her, and hopefully will allow me, to look beyond those barriers that often hold immigrants back from integrating well within new societies.

I hope that people will learn about some of the struggles that immigrants, and children of immigrants, face throughout their early and midlife as they try to adapt to new circumstances. I hope also that this knowledge of struggle will allow us to become more understanding, and more appreciative of the culture that others bring to the melting pot that is the United States of America.

During my time at NNHS, the most important thing I learned about myself was that I wasn’t afraid to take risks. Seeing myself beyond a risk-averse cautionary allowed me to find and pursue interests in entrepreneurship and perform better when I understood that while I was taking risks, the reward would pay off. Learning to balance this behavior and go for things when necessary while also being safe in the right contexts really helped me to develop a good personality while still staying out of trouble. I learned that my community really values people who contribute, whether to discussions, or to clubs, or anything else really. People who have energy, and give it to others can simply not be replaced. I learned that the world is huge, and that there are more than enough opportunities within the world worth trying, and I hope to explore as many of them as I possibly can in the coming years.

My advice to future NNHS seniors is to try not to procrastinate your work (Do as I say and not as I do), especially when it comes to college applications and homework to stay on top of your classes. I will say, however, to not spend more than a couple of hours a day on these matters, because at the end of the day, you’re a senior! You’ve worked so so hard for 3 years, so you should be able to enjoy this final year as the top dogs of Naperville North.

 

Voices project can be found here: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1CpQ1i9FVtolvvrIY0bM5yJZqIR7_X1PWEEn1yXacifU/edit#slide=id.gdcb3c5123b_0_125

Most people know what a drone is; simply put, it’s something that flies. Hobbyist drones are super cool, super fun, and super exciting, and while they’re amazing for people of all ages to have fun zipping around, sometimes taking pictures while doing flips and stunts; they aren’t the most practical. In this blog post, I’ll be discussing the use cases, and the drawbacks, to hobbyist drones’ more industrial, practical, and ultimately dangerous counterparts, commercial drones. 

To start, commercial drones are simply drones that are sold to an organization or company for some purpose. Commercial drones fall under many categories, often accomplishing many. Examples of these categories include photography, real estate, agriculture, package delivery, rail inspection, electrical line inspection, search and rescue, geographical mapping, and even water conservation. Drones used for these purposes are often much larger, more powerful, and more advanced than your run of the mill hobbyist drones. 

The commercial drone industry is set to grow at a record breaking rate of 57% annual growth per year; faster than many other emerging industries. Most of the growth is projected to occur in package delivery, a necessary upgrade from air shipping and drivers in an effort to reduce pollution, last mile costs, and delivery times. While the technology for electronic package delivery by drones already exists (Amazon, Alphabet, and even Walmart have entire drone sectors focused on developing package delivery technology), the limiting factor is not technological, but logistical. Here is where most people get confused about drone delivery: Drone delivery already exists in some extremely rural trial areas because we have the technology to do so, but is not widespread, and will not be widespread for at least 5 or 10 years because of logistical concerns. 

For one, it is very very difficult, if not impossible, to attain a zero failure rate in drones. What this means is that despite 99% of missions completing successfully, the 1% is potentially dangerous. What I mean by this is that if a battery, flight controller, or gps tracker fails during flight, it could cause the drone to drop out of the sky. Well, what if drones are light and soft? This helps if they would be hitting people, although the altitude from which they fall is large enough to still cause significant personal injury. However, a much more drastic situation might be if a drone falls over a busy interstate highway onto the windshield of a moving car. In total, the windshield would most likely experience the force of a 10 kg object hitting it at 100+ miles per hour. This could cause huge pileups involving multiple vehicles and potential deaths to several people. When trucks fail, A package gets delivered a day late, whereas if a drone fails, it could cause deaths. This is the exact reason why drones are so heavily regulated by agencies like the FAA. 

The Federal Aviation Administration is in the process of drafting and revising rules for commercial drone use in order to enable drone delivery to occur legally in more populated areas, while still maintaining a reasonable margin of safety. 

Therefore, although the drone industry is projected to grow at a groundbreaking rate, the logistical and legal concerns, many of which are still up in the air (literally) will be the true determinant of whether the commercial drone industry will break the boundaries of human societies to fundamentally change the way we live our daily lives. 

     Black Panther is a movie based in the fictitious African nation of Wakanda. The fictitious movie is set in the future with many historical references throughout the movie. While this is a fictitious movie, there are historical references littered throughout the movie. For example, socially, the television company, European, shows Wakanda as a poor nation that does not have the resources it needs to survive without European aid. This is similar to the White Man’s Burden by Rudyard Kipling, as his poem believes that uncivilized, African countries cannot survive if they have the right of self determination. He implies that African countries have no merit without European powers. Politically, Wakanda is a monarchy with a council. The king is T’challa who inherited the throne from his father. The monarchy is a form of government characteristic of many earlier African nations. As far as interactions with the environment, vibranium is an abundant natural resource in Wakanda that leads to many technological advances, atypical to the primitive, savage view that scholars in the 18th and 19th centuries often possessed. Culturally, there is a strong cultural trait in the Black Panther itself. For example, as T’challa is about to become king, the citizens sing songs and dance together in a very specific way. This is representative of the culture that Africans had and continue to have. The ritual is also representative of the culture that was stripped from several African countries during European imperialism. There was no European dress or song, and thus the only European influence in the ritual was the language. Economically, Wakanda resists the common stereotype of a poor African country. The Europeans view Wakanda as not economically stable, although Wakanda is actually one of the richest countries in the world due to their vibranium. As far as the plot goes, the movie starts off with the previous king, T’challa’s father visiting the U.S. and reporting on a vibranium theft. 9 years later, that king dies and T’challa suceeds him as king. He had to complete a ritual, including fighting off Baku, a king from the mountain kingdom, in order to win the throne. After defeating Baku, T’challa suceeds the throne and attends a casino tournament in order to intercept the thief that stole the vibranium. While there, he meets an American ambassador, Everett K. Ross. T’challa’s party is forced to bring Everett back to Wakanda because Everett got shot. Erik Killmonger, a Wakandan who was born and raised in America, comes back to Wakanda to challenge the throne of Wakanda. He throws T’challa off of a cliff and ascends the throne. T’challa is found in a river and revived by Wakandans who sought help from the Mountain King. T’challa fights back against Erik and wins back the throne. The movie ends with T’challa at an ambassador conference and is opening up to the rest of the world. T’challa represents a monarch in African society. He is a good king and an effective leader, contrary to the historical view that Africans could not have the power to self-determine. Everett, the American, represents a European. He is amazed at the technological prowess of Wakanda. This is similar to the Europeans’ awe at figures like Mansa Musa who had huge amounts of money. Erik represents European influence. Raised in the U.S., he comes to Wakanda and suggests major changes. He burns the papers and chamber used for ascension, an example of the culture destruction characteristic of European influence. This movie was purely fictitious and not meant for any historical references, although several can be extrapolated from the movie. As far as filming techniques, the setting, Wakanda was a direct contrast to the poor African country view that is common. It contributes to the realism in that it is very futuristic and could be a viable futuristic city. Costuming was very important as it showed the lack of European influence on Wakanda. For example, the women warrior force is dressed in African garb and have shaved heads, even complaining about wigs that they have to wear during the scene in South Korea. To conclude, Black Panther, although not based on any historical events, has references to African history littered throughout it.

Getting over plateaus in chess is one of the hardest parts of getting better. No matter how much you play sometimes, you won’t see huge improvement constantly, your path, like mine did, might be full of huge dips and valleys. I do hope that these tips help you, as they helped me, to overcome these challenges and focus on the long term improvement. 

I want to start off with a disclaimer: these are tips for the intermediate chess player looking to improve as fast as possible while also having fun. These are tips I’ve employed in my journey towards improvement in chess, and I hope they bring you the same success as they’ve brought me. With that said, enjoy these tips to help you become a better chess player. 

 

1. Play spicy openings! 

As a strongly tactical player myself, I always enjoy getting into the wild positions that arise after such openings as the Latvian Gambit (1. e4 e5, 2.Nc3 and the dubious, yet interesting move f5!!), the Wing gambit against the French (1. e4 e6 2. Nc3 d5 3. e5 c5 with 4. b4 intending to play a3 and sacrifice two pawns for central control) and the unassuming but powerful a3 Sicilian against the Sicilian defense(1. e4 c5 2. a3!). Not only will the positions out of the openings put you in a more comfortable position than your opponent, but they will also sharpen your tactical skills while creating wild and interesting games. One of the reasons I almost lost interest in chess was because each game seemed the same, but that was because I played boring openings that led to repetitive positions. Playing the openings suggested above will help avoid this by generating interesting and novel positions every time that really make you think. Honestly, this is definitely my playstyle so playing like this suits me and interests me, but you might have other openings that you love. I’m not saying that you absolutely have to play the openings I listed above, but find openings that you enjoy, study them, and play them to keep yourself interested. 

1. Play with friends! 

One of the most important elements to keep yourself engaged with chess is to try to play with people who you know also enjoy playing chess. I remember as a kid I used to love playing chess with my dad (even though I barely knew how the pieces moved), and as a high schooler, playing chess with my friends is definitely one of my favorite ways to spend my time. The bottom line is that you’re definitely going to enjoy playing chess with others as opposed to just yourself so see if there’s anybody you know who’s also interested. In addition, friends can help you get through those plateaus by encouraging you to play chess. The only reason I got into chess was because I had a bunch of great friends who were always playing it and having fun, and I wanted to be a part of that. 4 years later, I can definitely say that the experience has definitely proved itself worthy. An interesting way to spice things up with chess against friends is to make bets with them about certain openings, time controls, or really anything to add some stakes on the line (I’ve bet a lot of pushups during my chess career).

1. Watch chess streamers!

One of the plus sides of the coronavirus was that the online chess community experienced tremendous growth, especially in the rise of twitch personalities who regularly stream chess content. Watching these people play chess can be super fun, especially during time scrambles and exciting events. While some streams you can watch just to have fun, watching people who are better than me (GM Hikaru, GM Alireza Firouzja, IM Levy Rozman, and IM Eric Rosen have been my go-to streams) has actually helped me improve a lot. Often times, these amazing players broadcast their thinking processes and certain aspects of their play which you can then implement to play at a higher level. 

While there are hundreds of other chess tips I could give, these three were definitely the most instrumental in getting me through the plateaus and dips in my online chess rating. Thanks to these outlets, I’ve never truly lost interest in chess, and will continue playing it for the foreseeable future. I hope you find these helpful! Happy chessing!

 

The Jabberwocky 

 

Lewis Carroll 

 

’Twas brillig, and the slithy toves

      Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:

All mimsy were the borogoves,

      And the mome raths outgrabe.

 

“Beware the Jabberwock, my son!

      The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!

Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun

      The frumious Bandersnatch!”

 

He took his vorpal sword in hand;

      Long time the manxome foe he sought—

So rested he by the Tumtum tree

      And stood awhile in thought.

 

And, as in uffish thought he stood,

      The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame,

Came whiffling through the tulgey wood,

      And burbled as it came!

 

One, two! One, two! And through and through

      The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!

He left it dead, and with its head

      He went galumphing back.

 

“And hast thou slain the Jabberwock?

      Come to my arms, my beamish boy!

O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!”

      He chortled in his joy.

 

’Twas brillig, and the slithy toves

      Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:

All mimsy were the borogoves,

      And the mome raths outgrabe.

 

Lewis Carroll’s Jabberwocky, referred to as ‘nonsense literature’ by many, tells the story of a young boy who ventures out into the world to defeat evil, is victorious, and then returns home. The relative lack of ‘proper’ english words indicates a lack of seriousness or urgency from the beginning of the poem, meaning that this is not a poem meant to educate, inform, or persuade, but one meant for entertainment. 

The first stanza sets the scene with its content, but also with its meter and rhyme scheme. Even in the first sentence, there are three uncommon, ‘nonsensical’ words to interest the audience immediately. These odd words draw the reader in, making them curious to understand not only the events occurring now, but the events that will occur later. The sounds of the words ‘brillig’, ‘slithy’, and ‘toves’ seem like a very old dialect of english, setting the scene for a fairy tale like story. Already, Carroll wants to surprise the audience and keep them wanting more; this is not simply a poem with a message meant to be understood, but a poem with a message meant to be interpreted and extracted. The whole purpose of the first stanza is to place the audience in unfamiliar territory, with a yearning to understand more about it. A pompous explanation of the setting, the first stanza explains the time: brillig is an antiquated term for near afternoon, the setting: ‘slithy toves’ abound, so this is most likely a fairy tale land with fictional animals and places, and the ambiance: while the words and names are nonsense, their sound places us in a bog like atmosphere, where mimsy can be interpreted as restless and outgrabe interpreted as an outcry of overall miserability. While the setting and language are unfamiliar, Carroll prevents frustration by giving some familiarity in the rhyme scheme, ABAB, and the meter: a simple iambic pentameter. Most words being under two syllables means that even from the first stanza, the poem reads like a song; it flows, bending and twisting in the mind of the audience. 

The second stanza introduces the first notable characters. The narrator seems to be an older, wiser, person who is educating a younger person on the dangers of the wild. Here we see a classic set up of an evil, and a quest to fight back. Although the audience has never seen a Jabberwock, or a JubJub bird, Carroll uses personification of the Jabberwock’s scariest elements, its claws and its jaws, to characterize the Jabberwock as ruthlessly animalistic and evil. It will eat anything, even this little boy. While Carroll stays in the familiar ABAB rhyme scheme, he breaks iambic pentameter in the last line of the stanza, moving into a meter that is hard to classify. While the familiarity of lyrical iambic pentameter coupled with ABAB rhyme scheme allows us to have some understanding of the direction of the poem, this break is meant to give a somewhat startling effect, emphasizing that this will not be a boring story. Caroll forces the reader to pay particular attention. 

In the next stanza, Carroll sets the main character upon his quest. The use of the word foe indicates a struggle between two forces. The characterization in the previous stance, coupled with the knowledge that the main character has a vorpal (connotes noble through its sound) sword implies that the character setting out on the quest is good, while the forces around him are evil. While this is a more understandable stanza than the last two, Caroll keeps the audience thinking by slightly altering the rhyme scheme to ABCB. This prevents the audience from simply scanning the poem, forcing them to engage with the poem. 

The next stanza details the arrival of the evil Jabberwock. Words like ‘Whiffing’, ‘eyes of flame’, and ‘burbled’ indicate that the approach of the Jabberwocky struck fear into the main character, for good reason. It is now very clear that the Jabberwock is representative of evil. Caroll returns to the more familiar ABAB rhyme scheme to make sure the reader understands this critical moment in the plot of the poem. 

The next stanza declares how his blade went ‘snicker-snack’, killing the Jabberwock. This is the climax of the poem, exclamation points building up excitement while ‘snicker-snack’ describes in an unfamiliar, yet captivating way, exactly how the hero defeated the beast. Here, Caroll switches to an ABCB rhyme scheme, building a very important internal rhyme in the third line of the stanza. Dead and head rhyme, and are very close together, meaning that this is a point meant to be read fast, with excitement and astonishment. “Galumphing” sounds like it conveys a triumphant, brisk, march back to the where the quest began. Our hero has vanquished his foe. 

The next stanza declares the excitement that our older, wiser, person feels upon hearing that the person he brought up has defeated the greatest foe. Celebration words, like ‘Callooh’ and ‘Callay’ punctuated by exclamation marks excites the audience one last time before the poem reaches its resolution. This is a classic example of a final hill in a climactic plot characteristic of tales about quests. 

Finally, the original stanza is repeated. This indicates that while the Jabberwock has been slain, and there was a period of excitement; it was temporary. Everything has returned to normal; our hero is in the same setting at the same time, with the same unpleasant ambience, even after vanquishing his greatest foe. 

Overall, the meter, vocabulary and rhyme scheme present in this ballad makes it an engaging enjoyment read. The lack of coherent message indicates that Caroll is not trying to persuade or inform, but to entertain; a purpose that is perhaps just as important in poetry as the others. 

With the rapid growth of online chess, it is no surprise that more and more people are turning towards it as a way to destress after hard work, looking for a fun and unique way to stretch their mind. With the release of Netflix’s Queen’s Gambit and the growth of online streamers like Grandmaster Hikaru Nakamura, who regularly has over 50 thousand people watching his streams and nearly a million followers on twitch, thousands of new people are being exposed to the game, or returning to a lost passion. If you’re new to chess, however, chess can be super confusing and difficult to start. Here are my 5 biggest tips for chess beginners. 

1. Study the four knights opening for a couple minutes each day and try to play it all the time.
   1. Opening theory (the process of memorizing or thinking through the first couple moves of chess) can be some of the most complicated, most unintuitive, and most time consuming aspects of chess. It is imperative that beginners understand basic opening principles and concepts before transitioning to more difficult openings, and the four knights opening is a great place to start. Develop you knights, bishops, and pawns in a logical manner so that they can do more later in the game. If you understand this opening, you can have some great early success so that you can focus less on memorizing openings and more on the spirit of chess. 
2. Stretch your mind with tactical puzzles 
   2. My favorite part of chess is solving tactical puzzles, where you are given a position and must find the sequence of best moves. Sometimes, these can be difficult and overwhelming for beginners, but I assure you that with just 10 minutes of tactical practice a day, you will improve so much at chess because they help you recognize and implement tactical patterns. Both lichess.org and chess.com have great puzzles adaptations where you can test your skills! 
3. Analyze your games 
   1. No matter what time control you play (bullet is under 2 minutes, blitz is between 2 and 10 minutes and rapid is generally anything longer than 10 minutes and shorter than an hour), make sure you analyze your games with a computer engine, or even better, a friend, after you finish them. In this way, you can avoid making the same mistakes over and over again so that you don’t get frustrated by the complexities of chess. Without consistently analyzing your games and trying to move your thought processes to make better decisions, it will be very difficult for you to improve your chess skills. 
4. Take your time! 
   1. This is a big one! Many beginners try to shuffle the pieces around randomly hoping that they can somehow get a win. The best way to improve your chess is to try and think through your moves. What does this move do? What will my opponent play if I play this move? What did my opponent threaten with their last move? Asking these questions and answering them often helps to make educated decisions about what the next best move is. Of course, answering these questions takes time, and that’s more than ok. I would rather have beginners lose on time in a completely winning position than have a lot of time left and be lost. 
5. Have fun! 
   1. More than anything else, chess is about having fun solving problems. If you have friends you can play with, it makes it all the better, and if you subscribe to twitch personalities like Hikaru Nakamura or Levy Rozman or Eric Rosen, you might even start to enjoy not only playing chess but watching chess. If you aren’t having fun, just relax and try to enjoy what you’re doing instead of focusing heavily on the result. 

These are my top 5 tips for beginners looking to get into chess. Ultimately, chess is extremely complex and people have devoted their lives to trying to figure it out so don’t be discouraged if you don’t immediately start crushing your opponents. If you’re looking to improve even faster, I recommend checking out the wealth of chess videos available online from YouTube courses by the Saint Louis Chess Club or lessons straight from chess.com. I hope you found my tips helpful and as always, have fun and happy chessing!

 

1. e4, e5
2. Nc3, f5?!

Hunting for tactics, checkmates, and free pieces, I dive deep into possible continuations, both winning and losing, attempting to uncover the moves that will turn our equal start into a decisive victory. Under my command, innocuous pawns march into battle, hoping to break through enemy lines and become powerful queens. Noble knights and gallant bishops die defending their king, while two rooks and a queen coordinate relentless attacks. 

Once the battle concludes, their maneuvers, sacrifices, and conquests are ultimately judged by an objective, soulless creature: computer analysis. Pursuing positional perfection, the computer condescendingly brands my second move, f5, with an offensive ?! (weak move). To add insult to injury, it suggests the boring, drawish, and conventional Nf6, claiming it to be the best move. 

Back when I used to play Nf6, my pawns struggled to break through, boxed in by those of the enemy. Bored knights and uninspired bishops reluctantly shuffled around, searching for better positions, while two rooks and a queen made futile attempts to escape the back rank. Ugh. 

Despite being called “possibly the worst opening in chess” by an International Master, I believe that the simple move f5 is a move that makes chess beautiful. f5, sacrificing a pawn right away in order to quickly develop pieces, gain control of the center, and lead your opponent into dangerous, unexplored positions, takes away the boring aspects of rote memorization associated with chess, instead allowing both players to create and execute novel ideas in undiscovered territory. 

While I love 2. f5, called the Latvian Gambit, I believe that its lessons extend beyond the chess world. It teaches us that without novelty, our worlds become a monotonous cycle of words and actions, done over and over again for no purpose, memorized and repeated without thought. Pursuing novelty in our lives encourages us to learn and to explore, necessary qualities to ensure that each day is better than the last. 

So, once again, I hope that you can find and pursue novelty in at least some areas of your life to make each day more interesting than the last. Have fun!

We love patterns. We love predictability. It’s a human trait; we simply love to know what’s coming next. But overly conventional life patterns can lead to a life lacking fulfillment, without excitement, and worst of all, one that causes regret. In my next few installments of my blog, I hope to show you why we should break free of convention and embrace the novel. 

First, what is conventional? What is novel? I define conventional as relating to an action, object, idea, or process that is continued out by many people over many years; an idea where most of us know what is next, and what the end result is. Conventionalism is a process through which we succumb to the same patterns that we’ve been pursuing all of our lives. Conventionalism is a path through which we, sometimes blindly, follow the paths of others under the assumption that if others do it, it must be good. Novelty is different; novelty is exciting. Novelty is, in simple words, something that we come up with and follow ourselves. An idea, path or process, which we alone have the claims to, which we alone follow, and where we explore the unknown. I am of the opinion that one cannot truly live in the moment without pursuing novelty as well as conventionalism. 

Many of us succumb to conventionality because we hate the thought of messing up. We view conventionalism as a safe path where we cannot fail, yet a more false pretense does not exist. Conventionalism can often lead to failure, especially when context requires a novelty. For example, conventional Indian wedding practices are to have giant gatherings with thousands of people, sometimes for over a week. Following this practice in the era of COVID can lead to disastrous results, with the potential for death. Novelty here is important; my family recently had a wedding over zoom, and although we were in our own houses, not sharing the same food or listening to the same music, we were still connected; the wedding was still a success. This is a simple example of how novelty and innovation in the face of unusual contexts often provides better, more beautiful solutions to problems. While as humans, we are afraid to take risks to pursue a novel path, they are often necessary and important in order to facilitate success in unusual circumstances. 

While conventionalism is sometimes important, it is just as important to look for ways in which we can do things differently. In this way, we can find better, more beautiful solutions to the problems in our lives. Novelty is not only important in our own individual lives, but also in the collective efforts of teams solving problems, no matter their scale. In my next installment, I will discuss the implications and necessity of novelty in the face of challenges. Before then, I hope you can find one area of your life for which you can try something new or explore a new passion or idea.

In 1997, Boeing merged with one of their competitors, the McDonnell Douglas Airplane company. Many analysts believe that this is the point where Boeing started to head downhill, although signs of it would not reveal themselves until later. 

The reason that this is often termed the turning point in Boeing’s history is that many employees described it as a shift from the primarily engineering morals of the early Boeing company to the business ambitions of the new Boeing company. Instead of focusing directly on engineering and indirectly on profits, Boeing quickly became a company whose real primary objective was to make money. 

The biggest evidence supporting this theory is the remarkable differences in company structure before and after the merger. Before the merger, engineers reined supreme and the board was primarily formed of engineers and previous pilots. After the merger, businesspeople were put in charge, a phase out that led to the situation today, where not a single engineer serves on the board for Boeing. 

Not only that, however, Boeing employees started complaining about being pushed towards unrealistic goals by higher members in the Boeing bureaucracy. In this way, although Boeing’s stated goals remained the same, much of the company’s soul disappeared.

While the consequences of this did not make themselves clear for over a decade, the 2018 and 2019 crashes of their 737 max program, as well as an investigation over leaked emails from employees placed Boeing in the global spotlight and portrayed Boeing for the first time as a failure instead of an engineering powerhouse. An investigation of these crashes exposed Boeing’s monetary ambitions when it was revealed that several engineers called the program “a joke” or complained to each other about the infeasibility of getting the Boeing 737 max project done in the time that the business oriented heads wanted it. 

As an aspiring engineer myself, I can tell you that engineers either do really high quality work slowly and expensively or more obtuse work quickly and cheaply. Boeing moved away from high quality towards quick and cheap, causing an overlook of details in both the software and hardware engineering of the Boeing 737 max.

Boeing’s history is a perfect example of what happens when companies let go of their morals and pursue money: somebody always gets hurt and in this case it was nearly 350 people who lost their lives. Despite learning this lesson, we see these giant corporations staring down the same path. Facebook, Google, Twitter and others don’t care about the lives that they hurt, only the money that they make and are just now starting to become the center of a global movement against this exploitation. 

Slowly, Boeing is rebuilding their reputation through a new CEO, a restructuring of the board and a comprehensive review of company policy and a redistribution of morality. Only time will tell whether or not this is successful. 

Whether or not we as citizens want to or should take action against these giant companies is up to each individual, but in order to foster real change, we all need to recognize first that many of the largest corporations today are in fact hurting us to make profit. Acknowledgment and activism from the bottom up is the only way to inflict change and we must, because who knows? 

The next failure from a company might cost a thousand lives, or even a hundred thousand. Boeing’s failures shook the aviation community, but it must awaken us all.

• The most recent version of the Boeing 747 family, the 747-8

Most of us know the Boeing company by their recent, tragic 737 MAX crashes that cost nearly 350 lives and shook the world of aviation. This is the story of how Boeing went from aerospace giant to the subject of worldwide outrage.

Boeing began humbly, in 1916 as a military plane manufacturer. Its journey began with simple two seat planes, aircraft that could take off and land from the water. Selling these to the Navy was the original purpose of the Boeing company. One important thing to note here is that Boeing started as a purely engineering company, founded by an engineer, with almost solely engineers employed. Eventually, nearing the 1930s, Boeing’s variations on their bombers and torpedo planes, the epitome of engineering achievement at the time, earned them a contract with the U.S. military. Simultaneously, in 1928, Boeing began its expansion into the role most of us know it as, a commercial airplane manufacturer. Boeing acquired several smaller companies very early on to gain the top minds and manufacturers necessary to make commercial airplane travel safe and accessible. While they developed their own line of relatively short range propeller planes, the standard at the time, they merged four companies under their ownership to form United Airlines. Eventually, United Airlines was dissolved from Boeing as part of an anti-trust lawsuit in the mind 1930s and grew into the United Airlines we all know today.

And although Boeing was turning massive profits from their defense contracts with the U.S. military, their commercial airline contracts were nothing compared to their competitors. In fact, in many cases, they were losing money from their commercial air transport division, the company only staying alive on stimuluses from the U.S. government for U.S. applications. That’s when the engineers at Boeing decided to change the world. They asked the questions that any engineers would ask, not how to make money, or how to outsell competitors, but how to make air travel more safe, more efficient, and more effective. This is often considered the start of the golden age of Boeing as while they had great success with incredible military technology such as the b-52 stratofortresses that proved critical to an Allied win in WWII, they also threw away preconceptions of the superiority of propeller planes and designed and produced a turbofan plane. Even despite early hesitation from potential customers, Boeing designed this beautiful airplane that at the time nobody thought was possible, but is a defining factor of our world today. They did it because Boeing was an engineering company: their primary goals weren’t to turn a profit or become the image of a successful company but to develop state of the art technology that would help others. Despite initial hesitation, this airplane, the Boeing 707 quickly became preferred by airlines and customers because it enabled shorter flight times and smoother flights. Powered by hundreds of thousands of innovations, it inspired the Boeing 7×7 line of planes that many of us fly today. In this time period between 1950 and 2000, Boeing’s mission of developing state of the art technology led them to play critical roles in the lunar landing (building orbiters and rocket components) and the commercial airliner boom.

During this golden age, Boeing developed two aircraft that most of us have probably heard of or been on, the 737 family as well as the 747 family. While the 737 family was an instant success because of its engineering feats, the Boeing 747 was less lucky. Initial hesitation from customers and investors led to much uncertainty surrounding what Boeing termed the culmination of engineering achievement up to that point. Being a team of engineers, led by engineers and guided by sound principles, Boeing went ahead and developed the 747 family, nearly bankrupting themselves in the process. Despite all of the initial uncertainty, the top quality engineering of the 747 allowed it to carry more passengers on longer routes, reducing costs for commercial airline companies, reducing costs for the everyday passenger. In this way, the engineering mission at Boeing indirectly led to profits, but also did something much more important; it made air travel accessible to the middle class for the first time. The 747 changed aviation so critically that it is now often termed as “The Queen of the Skies”.

Stay tuned for a part two in the next two weeks!