Breathe in the sweet smell of success

Finally, the weight of Ho'oulu ia Kamehameha is off of my shoulders and I can finally look back at everything and pat myself as well as my group members on the shoulder. We did a great thing. We actually contributed something to Kamehameha Schools, even if it is just a bench as Mr. Blake so kindly pointed out, that is used on a daily basis and is rather successful. I'd love to see this turn into a class. I think that encouraging such "out of the box" thinking should be implemented into every class. Part of being successful and innovative in life comes from being creative, which is something Kamehameha does not strive to teach.

I am proud of our final project. The portion that went extremely well was most definitely the construction phase and the presentation. Although we went "grossly" over the allotted time period, I got a lot of encouraging praises that our overall oral presentation was very detailed. The success of our bench came from the precise construction that me and nicole executed quite well. We knew that in order for the bench to not only look good but stand on its own 4 feet, it needed to be exact. With this in mind, we cut no corners and made sure that everything was done correctly, by checking and then double checking. The result was a damn sturdy bench! The polishing was definitely a success as well. Jo did an excellent job painting and installing the plexi-glass. I couldn't have done a better job.

A lot of things didn't go according to plan. Ms. Martin contacted us weeks after we would have wanted. Administration took forever to approve our project. I had to leave our group at a very crucial time in our completion phase. Not only that, but a lot when wrong in the construction process. For example, I had bought square head screws instead of cross-haired screws. The impact could only drill in cross-haired screws. A couple times, nicole and I had misunderstandings and she ended up drilling the wrong holes into the wood. Another huge unexpected event was going over our presentation allotted time by 15 minutes. I learned that a lot of things can go wrong and the best way to brace yourself for mistakes and errors is to be flexible and find ways to use them to your advantage.

To improve the project for next time, I would recommend allowing perhaps a semester to execute the entire project. The time frame seemed rather rushed and was nearly impossible for groups to finish on the given deadlines. I would also recommend starting the oral presentation portion early in the day, or perhaps put it on a Saturday morning to avoid any late nights (if a group happens to go over their time by 20min!). Other than that I really enjoyed the project and cannot think of any other improvements.

I learned a lot from this project, not really pertaining to physics, but to life. I learned the necessary "friend making" skills that are crucial to working successfully in groups in businesses. I learned how to communicate to important people and how to communicate effectively to my peers. I even learned that sometimes being "the nice guy" puts too much weight on your shoulders. If you want work distributed evenly, then you have to lay down the law and make others pull their weight. I also learned how hard it is to construct such a simple piece of furniture, which before this project I took for granted. I'll always remember to treat such objects with more respect, because they are products of someone's hard work and dedication.

To be honest, Ho'oulu ia Kamehameha did not feel like science at all. In fact, it felt more like Speech/Woods/English. When relating our project to physics, I knew that we were partially lying our way to a physics related solution. I knew that friction had little to nothing important to do with the project. Anybody, who has no knowledge of physics would know that sanding something down smooths it out. It doesn't take an understanding of physics to get the job done. It takes an understanding of physics to realize why it gets the job done. I felt that we should have picked a problem that had more physics related solutions, like the ID group and even the 5 minute warning bell group. Even so, I'm extremely happy with what my group and I accomplished.