Looking back on my month in Sweden I can say that I had an overall good experience even though it was very different than what I expected coming into the program. Even though I only had a few assumptions going in, those were mostly all turned on their head.
The ENGI 355 portion of the program was predominantly frontloaded into the first week and I am definitely glad that the class was structured this way because it would have been too difficult to fit it into the later weeks schedule. Coming in with little experience in 3D modeling I was nervous for this portion of the course because I knew we would have to move fast so I thought I might fall behind if I didn’t catch onto every concept as it was taught. However, I surprisingly got the hang of it pretty quickly and ended up enjoying the process of 3D design a lot more than I expected to. Even though the days were long and filled with lots of CAD, it didn’t ever seem monotonous since building the parts was kind of like solving a puzzle. Also I think the work was broken up nicely by the fikas which allowed some time to decompress and also to get to know my classmates better early on in the program. I thought the homework was reasonable but the only thing that annoyed me were a few drawings from the textbook that weren’t super clear. Even though it was short, I feel like I really learned a lot from this course and will be ready to design parts for future projects and will be well equipped to learn new 3D design programs.
The ENGI 200 course was one of the things that I had a vague idea of what I expected but those expectations were very different from the reality which was not necessarily a bad thing. I knew it would not just be a more prototyping focused rerun of 120 in the way I would have been at Rice, but Iinitially thought each of our own teams would be working on an independent engineering project with our own unique client. After reading the project brief I learned that was not the case and we would be divided up into sub teams (each with a different mix of Rice students, structural engineers, architects) but still all working towards one common goal. For us the project was broken down into one planning week followed by two building weeks.
Part of the planning experience I think could have been improved was the interaction between the groups and the teaching teams. Personally I would have liked to have had one member from the teaching team with us to just consult for some advice or to clear up confusion while still allowing us to create our own solution. I thought that the method of the teaching team being removed from the teams except for 3 of them checking in once a day and all of them suggesting different ideas, while not giving us an opportunity to defend our decisions, or explain that we have already done something they suggest was a little frustrating and counterproductive compared to a regular conversation. It felt like they were being too hands off until it reached a point where they would momentarily relinquish control and change the design, then go back to hands off work until the next day.
While this was a different course than I was used to taking, part of the reason why I appreciated and enjoyed it was because of the unique experience it provided. I think sacrificing the technical engineering design for more of a focus on teamwork and managing skills was better because I had already done ENGI 120 so this was something totally new. I liked how our teams were made from people of different backgrounds and areas of expertise since it gave me insight into how this communication would work in real world projects. Something else I grew to appreciate were the leadership roles we had to perform for a day. At first I thought that this was a waste of time for us and that the managing should be left to the professionals. But after my day as project manager, I realized how different it was to be responsible for managing a team of ~30 people and my own confidence as a leader grew as a result of that day.
I don’t know how much of this is viable feedback for the ENGI 200 course versus being feedback for Dare2Build but I figured I would give me thoughts on the program as a whole first. In terms of things Rice can improve on themselves, I would have liked a schedule or a better idea of what we were doing before arriving in Sweden. I know that the specifics of the ENGI 200 portion were not figured out until later but knowing the way we would be working would have been very helpful for packing. Also, I would have liked the program to have been a little longer so the days could have been less full of work and there was more time to relax and explore the city. Finally I would have wanted to see our project completed in the last week bu im sure this kind of scheduling will be fixed in subsequent years.
I still had lots of fun on this trip and I am glad that I did it. Getting to know the summer workers and Chalmers students was a great time. Also becoming good friends with the other Rice students was awesome. Looking back, our scootering and travel shenanigans are going to become lasting memories of mine and I hope that we stay friends in the future.
