Practical knowledge

I thoroughly enjoyed Isabel Pike ’11’s description of the “Art and Science of Motorcycle Design” course (On the Campus, March 23). My most practical electronics education came not from the EE department, where it was quite possible to graduate with no knowledge of which end of the soldering iron heated up, but from two other sources:

First, the legendary WPRB tech team of Dave Boggs and Bruce Almich (both ’72), known by the single word Boggs’n’Almich. Second, a noncredit course offered by the instrumentation technicians of the physics department. I don’t know if that still exists, but I certainly hope so. It was an eye-opening lesson in how the real world works.

The only depressing note was the column’s last line: “I’m talking with Risk Management.” Had there been Risk Management in the 1940s, there probably wouldn’t be a WPRB today.