A student I used to know wrote to thank me

CONTRIBUTORS Scott Tilley Florida Today Sept. 6, 2026, 5:01 a.m. ET A retired professor reflects on teaching software engineering and the initial disinterest of students in project management. Former students later appreciate the non-programming aspects of the curriculum once they enter the workforce. The author compares teaching to planting a seed, as the results are often not seen for many years. 'Some of this is going to bore you, some of it will be hard, and in a few years you'll be glad you sat through it.' I said a version of that on the first day of a university course called Introduction to Software Engineering at the University of California and at the Florida Institute of Technology, until I retired in 2018. In the first few weeks, we focused on requirements engineering, understanding what customers want, and project management, which covers people, forecasts, economics, and a daily to-do list. Most of my students didn't like any of it, because you do not enroll in a computing degree hoping to learn about budgets. They came in on the developer side, thinking software engineering is basically programming, which it absolutely is not. It is a massive superset. They also found it hard because most of it only applies when you're working in teams on long-lived projects. A student's own experience is an app hacked together over a weekend. There's nobody to manage but yourself. Then they graduate, and the company that hires them is interested in the material they sat through with their arms folded. Need a news break? Check out the all new PLAY hub with puzzles, games and more! Every so often, a student I have to work to place sends an email. I was right about project management. They didn't appreciate it at the time, but they're glad of it now because they can see what their managers are dealing with, and the coworkers who started with them can't yet. If you don't know the parable of the talents, it's in Matthew 25. A man going on a journey entrusts his property to three servants. A talent was a large sum of money. Two of them put it to work while he's away. The third, thinking the master is a hard man, is afraid and buries his share in the ground. When the master returns 'after a long time,' the money is exactly what it was. The other two doubled theirs. The long time is the part I keep coming back to. This month's theme is Plant the Tree, and a university is a good place to watch one grow. Its old name is the tree of knowledge, and a professor plants it for a living and rarely sees what comes up. This column spent July doing the work and August keeping a promise, and a syllabus is both. I made the promise on the first day, and my students kept it 10 years later, without remembering who said it. In my novel Death of a Professor, a former student remembers a dismissive line her old professor once said and builds a career on it. I made that up, but I think it happens often. Most of my students were faces in a lecture hall, lost in the crowd and then lost to time. The few who write are strangers to me now, doing work I will never see. Next week is for the gift with no name on it. Buried money and a planted seed look the same on the day you put them in the ground. Only one of them grows. Scott Tilley is the founder of CTS Ministries and an emeritus professor at the Florida Institute of Technology. You'll be able to find this column, Spirituality Today, every Sunday at floridatoday.com. Contact Tilley at stilley@cts.today.