By: Yoselin R.

Taking a course with very little instructions is beyond overwhelming. It’s scary taking steps that can lead you to failure. We all want to achieve but only very little amount of us are willing to take the steps that can lead us to the road of success. Like any other human being, we are all too scared to make mistakes.

Thanking a PLTW class that provides tools such as table saws, 3D printers and laser cutters is beyond amazing. Not being able to use all these tools is absolutely terrible. As we began to come closer to building our spin art machine, I was a bit scared to see how this project could turn out. At the beginning of our project, I had never touched a drill or even a driver. As soon as I was informed that we had to screw some parts together, I was absolutely worried of messing up. As I heard a few obnoxious sounds, my first thought was always, “you’re doing it wrong.”  Most of the time, I  just had to push through that unpleasant voice in my head that was always shouting, telling me to give up.

As we began to come closer to the end of the project, everything was doing fine. It was exactly the day of the Make-O-Rama that our project decided to take a left turn to broken valley. Our machine completely stopped working due to the motor not being able to function appropriately. It was exactly at that time that I decided it would be best if I gave up. At that time and place, it just seemed like the easiest decision ever. If it wasn’t for the support and encouragement of my teammates, I would’ve just called it a quit and that would’ve been the end of that. Luckily, it wasn’t. They helped me push through that moment of desire of giving up. After all the hard work we put into our project, we decided to keep moving forward and push through all the hard challenges. At the end of the day, our project was  a great success and all that hard work did pay off. If it wasn’t for my teammates and those bright smiles of all the individuals who tried our project, I wouldn’t have seen a point of continuing to work hard in future projects.

If I had to share any advice about giving up, it would be to always look ahead and work through the rough bumps along the way. If I would’ve given up on my project, I would’ve felt a lot worse about not finishing it than having something go wrong at the last minute. Overall, I have learned that having no instructions can have it’s good and it’s bad. It’s good because it helps you explore a lot more. It’s bad because it creates a sensational feeling of  messing up and not being able to move forward. Lastly, I would like to say that not having instructions, has helped jog my creativity along with improving my problem solving skills.