Time Management

I am really good at leaving things to the last minute and then getting them as efficiently as possible––as in, done minutes before the deadline! Though this is a skill that I am proud of, I also realize that my laid-back attitude will, at some point, bite me in the butt. Which is why I decided that this class––which in a number of ways (me, an engineer?) is already far different from what I'd usually take––would be my great attempt at ensuring I started projects with enough time to give test runs and fail and have to restart (i.e. what Amy said we should try to do as engineers).

Which brings me to the sharps container and lantern projects!

The sharps container group project went great and I think that's the beauty of having teammates who will hold you accountable to working collectively. I really enjoy teams (as I mentioned I am on the crew team) because of this very component of cooperation––it is absolutely a huge factor as to why the crew team has been so successful, and why I think our sharps container was a success. We started early enough after the class it was assigned and seemed to all be on the same page as to how simple we wanted our design to be. We collaborated very well together and had some great brainstorming sessions when the container didn't work exactly how we wanted it to. Finally, we all seemed to be OK with it not being or looking "perfect" (which is something I really appreciated, because though I am detail-oriented, I have a number of other priorities before perfectionism). All in all we had fun together, worked efficiently, and planned well-enough to be done several days early!

My lantern experience also worked well, as I had an image in my head (of a typical old-fashioned lantern) after several days of pondering the project, and also because we had class time to figure out the proper resistor. While working on the sharps project I got a sense of the materials around the classroom that I wanted to use for my lantern, which cut down on the time I had to spend when I arrived to work on it. I was able to complete the project in one period of time in the classroom, but I do wish I had given myself a little bit longer to think about how the switch would operate. This is a function of my lantern that I would still want to improve, but that I am still uncertain how I would improve it.

The final parts of these projects were the blog posts and I must say that I fared better on making the projects than completing the posts. As they stand, they are still only partially completed. This is one-part procrastination, one-part because this week got hectic with the start of our crew season early morning wake-ups (and thus the chronic state of fatigue until my body/mind adjust to having to shut off around 8 pm), and the final part because I had in my mind that the deadline for all the posts was today (Friday). On that front, I fully admit that they are several days overdue and I will ensure that all future posts are submitted (at least hours) earlier than the deadline.