This year has been quite the journey for me as a person and engineer. I have never taken a class where I’ve been challenged to such a level of organization and responsibility to take on a yearlong project, but I love it. The skills I’ve acquired will stick with me for the rest of my life, fueling my success and work in other fields. In the beginning of the school year, I found it difficult and scary to reach out to people I didn’t know. Now, it is not an issue at all. There was a certain anxiety I faced when having to talk to new people that I no longer have. In a way, I’ve developed an immunity from embarrassment which I’m so proud of.
My project changed a lot from what it was originally going to be. At the start of the year, I focused on getting a switch-adapted toy drive at the Special Olympics. After an email that wasn’t replied to, I decided to move on to making a toy library in every school in the community. This way, these toys can be used for generations rather than a year or two by families. I also played around with the idea of writing a research paper on the findings/journey of my donations but I realized that no one would want to read it and my audience would be too small. After meeting with teachers on this subject, they recommended turning to social media and having a platform to inspire other students like me to adapt toys for students in their respective schools. After a ton of thought, I realized that this wouldn’t be sustainable and it would be nearly impossible to get people excited about this opportunity. In other words, marketing wasn’t my thing while engineering was.
I am extremely fortunate to be able to say that I didn't run into many challenges since the community is very supportive of this project. Being able to get a response from anyone I email is incredible and only inspires me to continue reaching out to teachers and families in the community. The part of the year that I felt most proud was when I had the opportunity to go to Tecumseh’s Learning Pad to be recorded with the students for a video by JD. I didn’t know what to expect going into it, but I quickly found how rewarding it was to watch kids being able to play independently for the first time in their lives. Watching children who are living through some really tough times smile and laugh is a feeling I’ve never experienced before but one I am better for.
The most meaningful part of this project was just that: helping children with motor disabilities in CNY finally have fun and learn. Starting a yearlong project is extremely daunting, so I had to learn how to keep myself accountable and set goals for myself by certain deadlines. Although some of these didn’t work out due to the nature of my project, I’m still happy with my progress with accountability as a person. This course taught me more than just how wonderful it feels to make an impact on the community; it taught me life lessons I will never forget and skills I’ll never lose.