... I just want to stick wires in breadboards and make froggies dance!!!
Okay, but seriously, that stupid dancing frog was clearly my most proud moment of the semester. I had to use Tinkercad, which was totally new to me, and it also involved using other people's existing sketches and modifying them for my own. I also had to use our new 3D printers at MCC, which was also semi-disastrous (I managed to clog the best-working one right after I finished). I also had to take a breath and realize it was okay if it wasn't "perfect" insofar as getting the math scaling right.
At the beginning, I was irritated we were going to have to learn to use Arduino - I had skillfully made great excuses for not learning it for about 15 years now and had no intent to stop - but here we were. Ugh. I will say that Tinkercad was a Godsend because if all I could do was just experiment with the physical equipment I think I would have given up much earlier. Being able to "prove" to myself that at least, in theory, the circuit should work gave me the courage to try and get it to work in reality. Then later, when Tinkercad couldn't keep up with what I was doing (I'm looking at you, stupid motor), I was confident enough-ish that I could go straight to the board (having tested out the code in another way in Tinkercad).
I enjoyed looking through the book, and not letting myself just "get by." Paulina made me take this class (because she's a super-meany), and I absolutely 100% did not have time for it. But of course as soon as we got into it, I was hooked. I'm never going to see myself as a "real-life-maker-person" because there are just too many highly-competent individuals around me, but I feel like I can at least be a Poser. Like, I can say, "Yeah, you know, this one time when I was trying to get this servo working with my Arduino...." but then if anyone asks, "did you try flashing your blahblahblah," I'll just turn into a pile of bubbling garbage.
In general, looking back, I see someone gaining confidence throughout a short 8-week semester, but honestly it would not have been possible had I not already had a strong background in programming and a reasonably-decent background in CAD. (Paulina is our CAD and 3D printing expert, and I was just trying to channel her.)
I always tell my students, "You never learn anything until the third time you see something." I've had two other opportunities where I've programmed an Arduino and had no idea what was going on. True to form, this is the time I finally yielded and decided, "okay I can't hide anymore, I've got to actually try to learn this."
I don't know what lies ahead for me in my maker world -- probably fixing the 3D printer, which we've named Peanut, before Paulina yells at me (she always makes me cry!!) (no, not really, just checking to see if she's reading this, lol), but she will give me a Disappointing Look if I don't get it working again and I wither under that gaze. I am really excited about building the Engineering Commons with Paulina and ****maybe**** I might be brave enough to try soldering. But I still need to attempt it two more times....
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