{"id":53,"date":"2018-04-30T10:37:30","date_gmt":"2018-04-30T17:37:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/magazine.hmc.edu\/spring-2018\/?p=53"},"modified":"2018-05-01T10:04:34","modified_gmt":"2018-05-01T17:04:34","slug":"logans-journey","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/magazine.hmc.edu\/spring-2018\/logans-journey\/","title":{"rendered":"Logan\u2019s Journey"},"content":{"rendered":"

SHELDON LOGAN \u201906 FOLLOWED HIS HEART TO<\/strong> Harvey Mudd, his head to software engineering and his gut to Google. Now, as a mentor, he\u2019s sharing his journey with a growing and appreciative following.<\/p>\n

Originally from Jamaica, Logan was accepted to several colleges in the U.S., but the California weather won his heart. \u201cI\u2019m from a tropical country and can\u2019t handle those East Coast winters,\u201d he says. Besides, his sister, Renee \u201904, was already at Harvey Mudd, and he was really hoping she would do some of his laundry. (That didn\u2019t happen.)<\/p>\n

\"Sheldon<\/div>\n

His plan was to become a chemist, but he learned in his first year of labs he didn\u2019t like chemistry. Logan eventually settled on engineering, then studied software engineering during his doctoral studies at the University of California, Santa Cruz.<\/p>\n

Just as he was finishing his degree, Logan had two tech companies vying for his attention: Synopsys, based in Mountain View, California, and Google. Initially he accepted the Synopsys offer because the position was more aligned with his graduate research, but his gut (and his sister, now an engineer at Apple) persuaded him to go with Google. Now he works in the tech giant\u2019s infrastructure section as a senior software engineer, monitoring hard drive performance, health and security. He appreciates the work-life balance (he gets to meet celebrities from time to time, and once scrimmaged with\u2014and scored on\u2014basketball hall-of-famer Dikembe Mutombo) and says he enjoys being able to advance his career at his own pace.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m not about the fast life,\u201d says Logan, who considers himself a go-with-the-flow-and-seewhere-it-leads kind of person. \u201cSoftware engineering has a short lifespan, so I\u2019m thinking of life beyond Google. You never know where technology is going to be in 10 years. Short-term plans can be concrete, but I\u2019ve had a more long-term vision.\u201d<\/p>\n

Logan says that vision could include teaching, and he\u2019s already getting a little taste of that potential as a mentor. Each summer, Google encourages employees to take interns under their wing. Logan has participated each of the past three summers, and in 2016, he had the pleasure of mentoring a current Harvey Mudd student, junior David Olumese.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s been good to see the road that Sheldon took,\u201d said Olumese, who\u2019s considering working with hardware after graduation. \u201cI\u2019m seeing the decisions he made to get where he is, to see what\u2019s possible and see an example of how one gets there. He\u2019s someone I can talk to if I need help making decisions.\u201d<\/p>\n

Besides introducing Olumese to other engineers to expand his network, Logan also built a personal relationship and still keeps in touch. They share a love of basketball, good meals and good laughs, but perhaps the strongest tie for Logan was their international background. Logan had little exposure to other cultures while growing up in Jamaica. At Harvey Mudd, he got his first taste of an international environment, meeting people coming from a variety of different experiences, customs and values. Still, there were few black students at Mudd when he graduated. He says he feels a special connection with Olumese, a native of Nigeria who grew up in Switzerland, because of their shared ethnicity.<\/p>\n

\"Sheldon<\/a>
Sheldon Logan \u201906 and David Olumese \u201919, mentor and mentee<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cI choose to be a mentor specifically to help those who come after me,\u201d Logan says.<\/p>\n

\u201cBeing a black person from a different country, I didn\u2019t know what it meant to be black in the States,\u201d says Logan, who recalls that many of his international friends were also in the same position. In 2004, when students burned an art project shaped like a cross on campus, student demonstrations and community discussions ensued. This incident, in particular, raised Logan\u2019s awareness of the depth of racial tensions in the U.S. \u201cFor me, it was a learning experience.\u201d<\/p>\n

But the event didn\u2019t taint his perspective of the U.S. and certainly not his view of Harvey Mudd. In fact, he says his four years in Claremont were probably the best of his life.<\/p>\n

\u201cI knew, when I got my degree, that was the finality of it,\u201d says Logan. \u201cI actually cried at graduation, and everyone was shocked. That\u2019s how great it was.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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