The Final Countdown

Music blasting from Monica’s speaker, nails from the nail gun shooting into pieces of trim and siding, constant chatter of high school drama… all common sounds you would hear if you walked into our second period engineering class. Everyday is a new adventure in this class; we are all faced with new situations and challenges. This is not only a very fun class; we also learn how to work in real life situations and how to make up our mess-ups.

Mistakes, very common if a first year engineering class because most of us are building for the first time ever. As a result, our chicken coops are full of mistakes. But, if you took a look at our coops, you would not be able to tell because we have learned how to fix and work around our mistakes. I was working on the door to my chicken coop with my friend Mia. We realized as we were nailing through the pallet wood and plywood that the nails were too long and they ended up sticking out the other end. At first we were annoyed because we had no idea how to work around this, but then we came up with the great idea to grind the nails off. Now if you have ever used a grinder, it is a pretty sick tool. Our mistake of using too long of nails turned into a whole class period of being able to use the grinder. The sparks make some really cool pictures too. In the end, we learned to measure the size of the nails before we hammer them and that mistakes can always be made up.

We are currently in the final stretch of our coops. Most groups are currently working on their roofs and putting finishing touches on. We are all eagerly working hard to finish our coops, excited to see how they will all turn out in the end. A lot of groups are starting to decide what colors to stain and paint their coops. In a few weeks, our coops will be completely done and I am excited to see how they all will look.