On the 6th of May, we got a tour of the Project team workspace in the basement of Upson. This is were a majority of the Engineering Project teams work, build, and design, since there is a fabrication and prototyping shop down there as well. However, I am a member of the CUSail project team, so I was already familiar with the space. The interesting part of the tour for me was seeing another team’s work and hearing them explain it. This tour was led by two members of CUAUV, which stands for Cornell University Autonomous Underwater Vehicle. Every year they design and create robots that can function by themselves underwater and perform a series of tasks. I greatly enjoyed hearing about their work, since I tend to always see what they’re doing, but never have the time to go over and ask them about it.
Another reason I went was to try and experience an every day part of my life “as a tourist”. Often times after we experience something enough times it tends to get boring and mundane, no matter how unique. The first time I was down in that lab it was amazing, since there was so much activity. But after so many weeks of working down there, it just becomes another mundane part of my life. That’s why I wanted to try and see the workspace as an outsider, and perhaps restore some of its uniqueness to me. This idea of “being a tourist” is one I try to implement more, such as going to a popular tourist location in New York City where I live. Since people find the lab interesting, then I definitely should be able to also.
It sounds like an interesting experience, it must be fun for the person who is so familiar with project works get to ‘tour’ the project place, and I’m glad you enjoyed the time and learnt a lot as well.
I like the idea of viewing things as a tourist. It does seem often that we lose the novelty of places/things, even if there are still so many things that we can learn from them.
This sounded like a very interesting event! I did not know that the basement of Upson is where most of the Project Teams work. It would be interesting to see all the work that the Project Teams do. I would love to visit and ask questions sometime in the future.
I think it’s really cool that you were open to being a “tourist” in a familiar space, as well as to exploring what another project team is working on. I think a lot of students tend to get so bogged down in their own concerns that they forget to look around them, so I think you’ve set a good example for what it really means to be an active student and learner. I also definitely agree that we rarely find mundane things to be extraordinary, but maybe that’s something that we should all be aware of, and try to change.
I haven’t seen the Project teams’ workspace, but I have seen a workspace in the basement of Carpenter Hall that I was really impressed by. I like your approach for trying to keep your work fresh. It really is good sometimes to try to take a step back and look at things from an outside perspective.