In 1960, in my sophomore year at Worcester Polytechnic Institute in Massachusetts, my machine shop grade was the only reason I didn’t receive high honors that semester. I swallowed my pride and begged the instructor to raise it to an A. My whole sense of self-worth seemed to depend on earning a 4.0 average. Looking back, it was pathetic of me to have measured my value as a human being by a grade-point average. But on campus, that was the reality. My shop instructor graciously refused my silly request. If a student can’t translate a blueprint into a practical piece of machined hardware, he doesn’t deserve an A.

That was when electrical engineering was my course of study. Soon I was knee-deep in the mudflats and quicksand of logarithmic equations, log tables, and Laplace transforms. Mathematics was a foreign language all its own, and we had to become fluent in it or flunk out while solving differential equations that defined sine waves and hysteresis curves. I couldn’t imagine deriving those solutions without my slide rule. We wore slide rules like sidearms, whipping them into action with every calculation. Those were the days when our campus computer room was a warehouse of flashing vacuum tubes and whirling magnetic tapes recording research calculations. Computer users waited months and paid dearly for a few precious hours in that air-conditioned room. It was the Model T version of what we now carry in our pockets. Today’s smartphone solves in seconds problems that once demanded the resources of an entire computer room.

We had a geeky physics professor, a tall, slender fellow who lived in one of the campus towers. I overheard a couple of sophomores nickname him the “Red Vector” because our returned exams were soaked in red ink, as though he’d spilled his own blood correcting them. Yet he never feared our mistakes. He welcomed them as evidence that we were struggling to understand the underlying physics. No final examination was ever 100 percent correct.

In 1963, I graduated cum laude. That distinction says less about my intelligence than about perseverance. I simply had to work harder than many of my classmates. Some earned straight high honors with what appeared to be half my effort.

Today, engineering students can access artificial intelligence to sift through oceans of information, recognize patterns, connect ideas, and produce polished reports in seconds. That astonishing ability has left many educators uneasy — not because AI writes essays but because it has broken the measuring stick universities have relied on for generations. Memorization no longer bolsters mastery. Fluent writing no longer guarantees original thought. The take-home essay isn’t evidence of genuine understanding. The greater danger is the disappearance of struggle. Muscles grow through resistance, and minds do, too. The solution isn’t to ban AI. It’s to redesign education so students encounter reality before they try to write about it.

As a vocational teacher, I learned that firsthand. Imagine taking a physics class into a parking lot on a hot afternoon. Have students place one hand on a red car and the other on a blue one. Measure the temperature of each surface. Suddenly they aren’t memorizing facts about light absorption. They’re experiencing it. Now they have something real to explain. AI can certainly help polish the written report. But AI cannot replace the encounter that gives the report flesh and blood. It may recite Planck’s Constant flawlessly, yet it never felt that heat radiating from red paint.

Shortly after I graduated, WPI began requiring senior Qualifying Projects, recognizing that book knowledge is a far cry from practical knowledge. A hydraulic engineering student might help a village in a developing country design an irrigation system. The project forced students beyond textbooks and into reality, where theory either succeeds or fails.

My own qualifying project took a different form. I spent years on a penniless pilgrimage, trying to live the words of Scripture instead of merely admiring or memorizing them. Only through that long struggle did Christ’s teachings cease to be ideas and become lived reality.

Today I gladly use AI. It helps me express those experiences with greater clarity and precision than I could manage alone. It is a remarkable servant. But it can never substitute for the lived encounter that I report on.

Ironically, as a young engineering student I believed grades measured my worth. Sixty-six years later, I have learned that scholastic grades — and now artificial intelligence — cannot measure life’s highest wisdom. Wisdom is not merely information but what remains after the stings of reality, endured in life’s rugged high places, have tested the soul and yielded their sweetness. Such surrender became my Qualifying Project.