Welcome to Week 4 of my blog, if you’ve missed my previous blogs, here is last weeks one. Honestly, if you’ve never read any of them, you’re really not missing out y’know.
NO REGRETS
Well the actual date of writing this blog is the 25th of June because blablabla I’ve been super busy blablabla life sucks and I have no time management skills.
I’ll be putting in some meta-analysis of my writing in the blog post of the current time(25/6/2018) regarding how I write my blog posts and everything when it’s a month ahead. I promise there are no fake stories here.
Main topic
Well, if you’ve read the title of this story and wondered, Dan, how do you even get no sleep when you’re away from SUTD? It must be because of you doing something stupid like staying up late to watch Youtube videos or something(oh yeah I have a serious Youtube addiction so it was kind of a necessity to get a VPN to access it).
Well, to those people, you wouldn’t be wrong… BUT IT’S ALSO BECAUSE OF DIP.
On Thursday I went to the FABLAB HANGZHOU, which is a private fablab facility that operates outside of the school with my DIP group mates. It also means I had to take a 30 minute (comped) cab ride there.
When you go to the Fablab you always think that you’ll finish in 2 hours and you’ll be done for the day. And then you can go back to your room and sleep for the night. And most of the time it’ll just be wishful thinking.
We left the Fablab at 5am the next day.
How did this happen?
Well, the thing is, the item we were trying to build wasn’t even complicated, a simple rubbish bin mechanism that was supposed to lift the lid.
Somehow it took ages to do, with all the sizes not fitting and whatnot, and the DIP students having to rush another project before they could help us. So officially we entered at 8pm, but we only really got their assistance at 12am.
Oh did I mention that i had a theme visit to a ‘Future Life Expo’ the next day at 9am?
The Aftermath
When I finally finished the DIP work and headed back to my room, It was 6am.
Kenji looks at me and asks me “Dude why you so insane?”
I just look at him and asked him to wake me up in 2 hours.
Future Life Expo(FLEX)
When I woke up,off we went to the future life expo, which was a bunch of cool tech stuff that they were showcasing in an expo.
Yeah it was a bunch of cool stuff but I didn’t bother to take many photos because I had my eyes half closed for most of the expo.
The only photo I got was a cool planetarium thought(mostly only for photos).
Why are you doing so much for a project that doesn’t even give you a grade?
When I first knew I was doing a design project on top of my additional theme project in ALP. The first thought that came to my mind was “Oh god I’m hungry”
The second thought was “Oh god I don’t want to become the ‘burden foreign student’.”.
I’m not trying to generalize or be biased here, I’m just saying that I don’t want to leave this place with a reputation as a foreign student that never does anything and never goes to any group meetings. So i endeavored to contribute enough to not get that label.
One good thing about that night which we stayed up is that I feel that I’ve done enough to prevent that label from getting anywhere near me permanently.
I’m not claiming that I’ve done the most in the DIP project, oh no, there are definitely people who have done more than me in my group. I just don’t want to be the one pulling the group down because of what I did not do.
Here comes the HASS part
Group projects give us all a chance to contribute, conversely, the people who don’t contribute are always identified. A negative connotation follows them around. Even though this might not be my country, it still leaves a bad taste in my mouth if I were to be ‘that guy’.
I’m sure we’ve all had our fair share of non-contributing members, whatever their reason may be. What matters is,generally, group morale falls and anger is targeted to that member in particular. Such feelings are universal amongst most group projects, especially design in particular.
In a perfect world everyone would contribute as much as they can, in a perfect world perfect designs come true.
But this is not a perfect world and such people do exist. I know I’m not the most capable of person, so I put in effort to contribute as much as I can. This motivation may not be the best one, or even a logical one, but it’s a motivation nonetheless and I’m glad i have this reason, for I am a serial procrastinator(as you can see from the lateness of this blog).
Eh how come your blog post always got HASS at the end one?
I try to put in some HASS at the end of my blog because its required by TFI.
JUST JOKING
Writing a plain blog about my experiences and what I did is the most boring thing I’ve ever heard. Especially if I’m not an interesting person and most things that I do are not worth noting. Adding some commentary, jokes and a sprinkle of HASS makes it easier for the reader to read(?) although the alternative is easier.
So in conclusion, IT’S FOR YOU (and also my TFI report at the end but let’s just pretend it’s for you ok?)
Well, that’s been Week 4 at ALP, I’ll be ending off here and heading to do another project right now.
Until next time
-Dan
