Egor's reflection: When we started this project, we really didn't know what we were going to do. We struggled coming up with a problem to solve. Once we came up with the book holder idea, everything else sort of fell into place. Erin would tell us what we needed to do each week and Andrew and I followed. We were able to complete everything we needed for our Weebly and stay on track till the end. We split up the work pretty evenly and didn't really struggle. Also we always helped each other. Once we got to finally designing our prototype things went a little downhill. Coming up with the idea for a telescope arm with plastic took a while, but we figured it out. I messed it up the first time printing, but I figured out my mistake and fixed the project. Once we got the frame working we had to change what our project would look like, We didn't have enough time to create the stand in the 3D printer so we made it from wood. I mainly worked on the prototype while Andrew and Erin worked on the documents and presentation. Eventually Andrew came to help me with the project and we were able to finish it. We didn't have much time to review over the presentation once the prototype was done, so our dry run was pretty sloppy. After the dry run we focused on the presentation and made sure we all knew what to say for each slide. Once the presentation came around we were ready. I thought we did pretty well presenting. Overall I think this year was really fun since we got a lot of freedom on what to do with our project and it should us a great example of what we might do in college.
Andrew's Reflection: Capstone was a great way to end our four years of engineering. The freedom we were given while completing the project was immense and showed that we could actually be trusted to complete task given to us. While working on this project, we solved any problem that we encountered and were able to do so efficiently enough that we had our product working by the final deadline. Together, we worked to solve a problem and produce an outcome we were very proud of in the end. This year of engineering was filled with laughs and good times while we designed our product to be the best it possible could be. We had a great team and were able to effectively get this project done, ending a great series of four years in engineering.
Erin's Reflection: This senior capstone project was definitely the most involved, frustrating and rewarding endeavor in which I have participated. There were times when I wanted to drop out, switch team members, and give up. There were also moments when I was so grateful for the team I had, and the project we decided to create. I learned the most about trust and teamwork. I had to rely a lot on other members of my team to finish this project on time. For the first time in all 4 years of engineering, I couldn't do all the work. I had to deviate some tasks, or I would never finish capstone. While that realization was frustrating and daunting, it taught me how to communicate and trust others. In the beginning of the year, I had a plan for every week of capstone. I created an in-depth schedule for my team to follow that would allow us to finish the entire capstone project 10 days before the deadline. However, I had no way of planning for all the rough patches and setbacks that we would encounter. We started this project with no idea of what to create and we couldn't agree on a plan of action. Once we had a concept in our minds, it was very difficult for all of us to communicate with each other on what we were envisioning. We also had to deal with some 3D parts being the wrong size and other parts breaking completely. We had to spend many hours outside of the classroom to come up with a game plan, fix the prototype and plan our final presentation. Despite all of our struggles and conflicts, we ended this class with a finished capstone and a functional prototype.