Secret diary of a chemist ??- about surprises, disappointments, life purpose and highest impact.
Dr. Ludmilla Derr
Managing Director at Elite Experts Conferences | EEC Technology Podcast Host | Premium Panel Moderator | Automotive Industry | Electrification | Autonomous Driving | Connected Cars | New Mobility | Material Sciences
Secret diary of a chemist - well, not that secret?? About surprises, disappointments, life purpose and highest impact. It is a sunny day in Zurich and my train Zurich-Stuttgart is leaving the station. Tomorrow and the day after, Green Auto Summit 2022 will take place and celebrate its third birthday. Tomorrow I am going to lead a technical panel about innovations and trends in the EV market. But today is Sunday. It's time to snuggle comfortably in my seat, look out the window and reflect on the week. I'm thankful for everything that went well and that's a lot ?????? I'm also thankful for everything that didn't go well and gave me some lessons ?????? I'm learning, so it's still progress, isn’t it? ??
This week also brought a surprise - a positive one thankfully ?? I was contacted by someone from Sika's patent department who said if I agreed, I would be mentioned as an inventor in a Sika patent. Apparently, back when I was working in R&D at Sika, I did useful preliminary tests for this patent. Yes, I agreed. Even after so many years it’s rewarding to know that the tests lead to something meaningful. Let’s be honest, as a chemist a lot of what you create in the lab never ends up being a real project or a?real product. The majority of tests stay exactly that - tests ?? Disappointing?
No, not at all - it’s part of the game. And you learn that very natural development circle of a chemist early at the university. Excitement - curiosity - test - failure - disappointment - let’s try again - excitement - curiosity and so on ?? Semester after semester you learn to try, to fail, to try again. As a chemist you also perfectly know that doing a synthesis in real life you will never get 100% yield?and you learn to be perfectly ok with that ?? You develop a very resilient and pragmatic attitude towards life. Studying chemistry taught me so much more than ?just‘ chemistry!
How could I then give up being an ?active chemist‘ working in a R&D lab? Well, first of all, I never completely gave up chemistry as a lot of mobility relevant topics are all about chemistry. Second, if you study chemistry you also develop analytical mind which you can apply everywhere. However, the most important factor I was thinking about was something different.?
It’s IMPACT ??????
Let’s look at it in more details. Everyone has a certain combination of talents and strengths. How are you going to use your talents? Where can you make the biggest impact? I said that several times in my posts: I don’t rate success in my life based on ‘my yacht, my house, my car’ scale. For me, it’s the scale of how many people’s lives I’ve been able to positively impact. Knowing that my choice becomes obvious and simple. For me ?? I LOVE every project that we do at Elite Experts Conferences. Bringing people together that technically and professionally belong together is one of my strengths. The impact of some collaborations exceeds often my expectations by far. It is indeed impressive what magic happens when you dare to work predominantly with your strengths.
Nevertheless please never forget that such choices are highly individual. Your choices, your life have to be built on YOUR values, YOUR experiences, YOUR talents, YOUR wishes, YOUR definition of success. ?What is right for me doesn’t need to be right for you ?? It’s just the framework of considerations that I give but you have to fill that with content, your content, your soul ??????
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I wish everyone who goes her/his way or is still looking for her/his way all the luck in the world. Don't give up, just take the next step, and the next, and the next. You can do it!
Beautiful Sunday greetings - I have just arrived in Stuttgart ??
Ludmilla?
PS: On your way to your vision of the future you will meet many people who still have to go the way you are already going. Help them where you can. Nothing lights up your life as much as having helped someone else. Don't just believe me blindly, test it! I tell you as a chemist - testing in real life is the only real thing ?? So, good luck with everything??????
As ever, great insights into how we might all apply life’s lessons to constantly moving forward. I was recently thinking about my own career path and struggled to think of any of the twists and turns I have taken that have NOT been useful in some way.
Chief EV Charging Officer ??| DXBe Management ??| Business Advisory & Consulting | ?? Green Sustainability | eMobility Legend??| Speaker & Moderator?? | x-CTO IONITY | x-Telefónica | EV Charging Pro?| eVTOL | M&A
2 年Great post Dr. Ludmilla Derr, reflecting the own being and doing is part of our daily journey...????Amazing to see that the first seed ?? has grown into patent(s) and someone has remembered on you. This is not normal in our daily business, where (nearly) everybody is claiming success for himself of things he was even only "fairly" involved... and even not having build it. ??????
CEO bei Meyer-Hayoz Design Engineering l Red Dot Ambassador
2 年Liebe Ludmilla, herzliche Glückwünsche.
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2 年Nice piece Ludmilla ?? This week resilience, persistence and being happy are particularly meaningful ?? as well. Have a good week ??
Enthusiastic Learner | Digital Transformation | Research & Innovation | Computational Modelling
2 年Dr. Ludmilla Derr interesting to see how you extract experiences out of things that do not seem to be teaching us lessons, like chemistry in this case. Well in principle education is supposed to give both thoughts and methodologies to arrive at those thoughts. most of us do not seem to grasp at least one of these though. BTW so you were actually writing this while on the wasy, i.e., probably using laptop or so, but you mentioned you "snuggle comfortably in my seat, look out the window and reflect on the week". which one is this then? :p The question being, are you a window watcher or a laptop user in those (seemingly many) trips? Which one do you see as a better "experience" with more "impact"?