I am Kathryn, a freshman attending Charlotte Latin's upper school Engineering 1 class. I'm also an artist, avid reader, and enjoyer of sports (like tennis, badminton, running, etc.). As such, I like to read, illustrate/paint, play sports, and relax in my free time. I live with my mother, father, and a younger brother. I tend to learn differently in different courses, as expected, but in an Engineering classroom like this one, I learn best kinesthetic and visually. In the past, I've had better educational experiences learning with instructors who are able to balance strictness and lenience and teach effectively without being too tedious. I consider myself to be mainly self-motivated, but for some classes I'm driven by my grades. I signed up for Engineering Design Methods because, from what I've seen when I came here on tour, the course covers many different projects, all of which I find to be intriguing. It's a class with resources I would not have had available had I not come to Latin. I look forward to learning how to use these tools and designing and creating with them.Â
One memorable project I participated in was building a robot. It was for a weekend class I took in 5th grade called, for obvious reasons, robotics. The robot wasn't something I had designed, but more like a structure to be erected. In retrospect, I haven't designed many projects, which is another reason I'm excited to be taking this class, and when I do its for the sporadic science class experiment. This project taught me how important it is to follow instructions to the T because sometimes I would misread the directions and have to redress my error. I also learned the names of the tools I used (such as the Allen wrench). The satisfaction of then programming the robot successfully made all the menial work before worth it.