After reading the announcement posted about our project, the excitment and interest of our group scattered faster than 5th graders on the last day of school before summer.... Finding this out now means we have wasted precious days, four meetings, and "hundreds of hours". We met today and the stimulation was gone. We were all in shell-shock. No one knows what we can and can't do now. And no one knows even what to do. I'm completely lost because this is my senior design project. This is what I'm supposed to be showing companies when I'm trying to get a job. However, what am I going to be showing these people? Obviously I can talk a lot about the experience, which has been very valuable, but if the team does not create anything tangible...then all I have is talk, with no support. What I mean by tangible is something that demonstrates teamwork, engineering, and purpose. I feel like we are expected to make something that has no impact. More of something that "looks cool". I don't want to just make something that looks cool. I don't want to make a "trophy wife" project. I need substance. No matter what we do for our surface, I don't see what it is going to improve upon. I don't mind making a heliotropic surface, I have ideas about it, but not knowing it till late in the game, is extremely frustrating. This is the one time in my undergraduate career in which I get to make something, and now no one in my group even wants to do anything because everyone's annoyed with the news. The wind from our sails has been sucked away.
On a lighter note, this is an example of a heliotropic surface I would like to do.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Fyre3lAt64&feature=player_embedded
Another longer, cooler video. If you go to like 3:15ish you will see fire stimulating it and it's really cool.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BLTcVNyOhUc&feature=player_embedded
It's the Mimosa púdica.
It's not an inescapable constraint at all. It's always easier to bend the rules given to fit your own ideas than to make your own rules in a lawless situation. Read my last few blog posts, you'll see that there's still a lot of open space for thought within the constraints.
ReplyDeleteI agree, I don't think it's an inescapable constraint, it just seems like the project will have less of a purpose. Instead of trying to do something different among the groups, we are all just making more interesting ways to track the sun.... This is where the frustration arises because I feel we aren't improving upon anything.
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