On Monday, we did this workshop over Alexander Technique. I had never heard it before but apparently it's sort of about how the position of your body affects things like your voice and confidence. The lady that was teaching the workshop had us go through a few exercises to help us understand what AT was and how it can be used. To be honest I still don't know what it is or what it does but it was an interesting workshop. The last thing we did with her was go through our presentation groups so that she could help us stand "right" and look more professional for the EnModes presentation.
Today was also the last day to Q-drop, so I talked with Anna about 211 and what my grade looked like after that last test and it was not good. I didn't think it wold be since that last test was horrible, but I was just hoping... I didn't want to get another D like last semester so I decided to Q-drop it and take it over the summer. I sent in the form and I later that night I had to web-stream with Mrs. Lyons to talk about it and make sure it was something that I wanted to do.Today was the first day that we would be at the AIB until 1 in the morning... When we got there in the morning, we immediately started working on the suggestions that they had made at the meeting last week. I got a whole lot of stuff done in the next few hours, making an entire solidworks model of the RAS-Q and then adding the sensors that we were going to use onto it so they knew what we would be doing with their device.
When we presented at 2, we presented for a whole 2 hours since Dr. Wasser would stop us about every 5 sentences to give us suggestions on how to change the way we were presenting it or to talk about how they wanted us to redesign the slide so that it flowed better. Once we got to my slide though, they didn't ask many questions since its just the design of the device and there isn't much t change with it. They did make me realize that I didn't update one of the pictures with the newest version of the device so there was something that we didn't even talk about on there.
For the next hour after we finished presenting, I worked on the changes to the presentation and to the device designs. We then had to wait for the other groups to present since they would be going through the same gauntlet that we had just gone through.
At around 6:30 they ordered a bunch of huge pizzas! I had about 8 slices before it was time to go to our math class... During our class though, we were all pretty out of it from a long day of work so I just worked on writing in my journal for the whole class period.
Once our math class was over, another group presented so we had to wait for 3 hours... That was the longest that any of our groups had gone so far and it felt like we were waiting forever because we had pretty much finished all of the stuff that we had been told to. While we were waiting, I was snapchatting my parents and my dad accidentally facetimed so I talked to them for about the next hour and a half, just waiting for the other group to finish...
When they finally got out, it was almost 11:30 and Dr. Wasser just told us to go home... We could have left like 3 hours before that and not have to wait for the other group but its fine... Once I got back to the house, I literally just threw on my pajamas and fell right asleep after this exhausting day.
The second day of EnModes work was even worse then the last... We got a lot more work done, but we had to stay a lot longer too. I woke up around 9 and when I checked my phone, I had a message saying that I was now the Treasurer of EWH!!! They had their elections last night and they had me send in a paragraph about why I thought I would make a good officer. Today was also when I realized that I can take the 9:48 tram into Bonn and still get to class at 10:15. That way I can have a relaxed breakfast without having to get up any warlier! Petra was working on a sudoku puzzle when I came down to have breakfast, but since it was the hard one, she quickly gave up because she couldn't figure out where to go from where she was at. So I copied it down and took it with me to see if I could figure it out for her.
I ended up getting there right on time, but only about half of the people were there on time... Pretty much everyone else got there around 10:30 -10:45... I started to work on the solidworks models and modify them a bit more when another group went ahead of us and then we had to wait even longer to present... When they got done, it was already time for lunch so we had to wait until after that to present.
Once we got back from lunch, we thought it was going to be our turn but apparently they had promised the group that took 3 hours yesterday that they could go earlier in the day so they didn't have to stay so late... So we had to wait again for them to go. While we waited, we presented to ourselves and got the presentation down to a science. We got the time down to about 20 minutes, but we felt like we could go a bit faster. I also had to come up with a conclusion that would sort of wrap up the whole presentation so we worked on that for an hour or so.
Finally it was our turn around 6 and we got through it in about 20 minutes. It was still a little rusty even after the hours of practicing so they gave us a few tips and then we went out to the library to eat. They got Ethiopian food catered in and it was like a whole buffet line. It was some pretty interesting food but I don't think I would ever get it again... Some of the dishes were good, but most of them I was not a fan of.
Once we were done eating, we got back to practicing while the other two groups went again. We didn't present again for another few hours so that gave us a lot more time to polish the presentation. We finally presented around 1 or so and we got our time down to 15 minutes and they were very impressed with how much we improved since last time and didn't have any changes for our presentation. He then called a cab for everyone that didn't have a tram or bus back to their houses, Sid and I being one of those groups. We waited and waited for our cab to get there but it never showed up. So once the other group was done, we told Dr. Wasser and he called them and said it didn't come and that we needed one. When that one showed up a few minutes later, another one pulled in right after it and i don't know if they were both for us... They asked if we got two and I just said yes because I didn't really know. So we might have made that other dude wait for nothing but its fine. We didn't get back to the house until around 2:30 and we went straight to bed...
On Thursday I finally got up early enough to take a shower before breakfast. I then shaved and got dressed in business casual. I then went downstairs to get breakfast and Petra was already working in her office so I just ate by myself. It was a pretty warm day, so when I got to the AIB, I left my jacket there and brought my backpack with me to Aachen (which I didn't even need).
On the bus ride there, I practiced my part for about 30 minutes but after that I just listened to music since Ryan and Sean were talking up a storm and I couldn't concentrate. I really need to learn not to sit by them because they talk about the most random things.
Once we got to Aachen, we stopped at the university that we came to a few weeks ago to take a picture for some reason (it was for the booklet). Afterwards we got "lunch" which consisted of a pretzel and a sandwich. A few people didn't want their pretzels so i got two more! Once of them I ate then and the other I saved for later.
We then got back on the bus and took it over to the hotel where we pretty much waited for Enmodes to get there. While we were waiting, we did some "relaxing" Qigong in the presentation room in front of our seats (where there was literally no space to be doing that) while Sarah got a few videos of all of us being dorks doing that. We then sat down and went over all of our parts before they got there.
Once the Enmodes people got there, we then had to wait for them to bring us some pots of coffee... Once he finally started the presentation, he talked for about 15 minutes about Leonardo and the Ninja Turtles and how we went through the whole process of coming of with this project. The groups then went after him, going over each of our designs and what we had come up with for the problem that we found at the very beginning.
We were the last team to go since we were the biggest (and he wanted to save the best for last!) and when we introduced ourselves, I got caught up with park saying that him name was Youngjun so when it got to me, I said "Park" on accident and then corrected myself and said Ryan... Of course everyone laughed but it was a good was to break the tension/stress that we had about presenting.
Right at the very beginning, I realized that I forgot to grab the iPad from Vivian's backpack... So I asked Reagan who was right in front of me if she could go and get it. She didn't want to distract everyone so she texted Mats who was at the back of the room to grab it and bring it up to the front. As it was getting closer and closer to being my turn, I could feel my heart rate increasing with every minute... I don't know why I was so nervous because I had done it so many times before...
I went through my part with no problems, really impressing them when we gave them the iPad with the mock up on it. It went really smoothly until I got to the conclusion when I started to say the first conclusion that we came up with... I had already started to say it though so I had to commit to it but I had prepared an improved one the night before... It was pretty impromptu since I hadn't done that one in a while but it got the job done so that's all that matters.
Once we were all done, Dr. Wasser went back up there and gave an ending speech and then opened it up for questions. They brought us up group by group and went through each slide and said their questions as they went. That took a while but we were entertaining ourselves on the new snapchat games that you can play in groups😂.
Once they had asked all of their questions, we went outside and got some "bubbly" to celebrate a successful presentation and semester. We all took a few group pictures and talked for quite a bit and then we got back on the bus and headed back to Bonn.
We left for Berlin on Friday. I tried to just bring a backpack filled with my clothes for this trip since it wasn't too long and I didn't want to carry all that much. It worked out pretty good because I feel like that really helped me not look like a tourist and look more like a Berliner that would have a bus pass😂. Most of the time I didn't even buy a tram/bus pass so I was always a little afraid that they would check on the day that I didn't buy one. We went to quite a lot of places, the Berlin Botanical Gardens being one of my favorites since I had had quite enough museums for a while.
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