Thursday July 15

Here at Shad Waterloo, everyone woke up to an always delicious breakfast prepared by the Grebel kitchen and headed off to our morning lecture. Paul presented us a refreshing change to our normal lectures as we participated in an interactive design activity called a bricolage. A bricolage is the practice of assembling stuff-at-hand in order to create something new; in this case, we were to design a toy to entertain a 4 year old and a 6 year old in hopes of getting a 48' flat screen TV from the parents. This activity brought out the kid in all of us and gave an uplifting break from stressing about completing our design projects for tomorrow.

Next, I headed off to “Magic for Muggles” and learned some great card tricks, coin tricks and secrets of the pros. Our workshop group is getting ready to hopefully present some of these tricks in the workshop poster presentation and impress the rest of the Shads.

After lunch, we had another lecture by Rob and how he works integrating art into engineering design problems. With his company, Gorbet Designs Inc., he showed us the amazing solar energy sculpture which collects energy during the day and presents a light show which people can submit patterns for online. He talked about how he went through the design process and gave us an interesting perspective of how to apply the design in real life applications. Following the lecture, we had some project time. As the stress was building up for the big day tomorrow, we had a recreational activity to cool off some heat.

The staff kept us in suspense about what the recreational activity was until it was time. The big reveal showed that all 48 of us Shads will be playing a huge game of capture the flag! The territory spanned a quarter of the Waterloo campus and the competition grew between the “RED TEAM” and the “BLUE TEAM”. We played for a good hour under thunderstorm watch and as predicted, the thunder and lightening shut down the game. After letting loose and having some fun, we went back and focused on our design projects, frantically trying to finish and perfect everything for the project conference.

As I sit in our project room, working with my group hoping to sleep within the next few hours, we have pulled together as a team. This night has been the epitome of the Shad experience and possibly the hardest night of my life but one of the most memorable experiences ever.

Jeannie Xu, Shad Valley University of Waterloo 2010
Hometown: Toronto, Ontario