Rachel Woodroof

       I found science/engineering this year to be really challenging. I have never been the best at computers and frankly, I just do not like them. Therefore, when we were assigned a project that was to be accomplished solely on computers, I immediately knew the outcome was going to be bad. This was the Car Project, where we had to create parts in a 3D modeling program called CAD. In order to do this we used the program inventor, essentially CAD, and it was extremely complicated to use. There were so many steps, tools and variations of things it can do, it just gets plain old confusing. The Car Project was where we had to build small model cars with wheels, axels, body parts etc… During the process, it took me at least a week in order to figure out how to make ONE part of the many required pieces. I never could remember how to do certain steps and I would always run into those unsolvable problems (YES, they are real and anything is possible with Inventor).  Ultimately, this put me behind, so I ended up having to do the assembly (making all the parts go together in one file) at home by myself. Little did I know that would be the hardest part! I started to work on it at 7:00pm and I continued to work on it until 4:37am, but that is not even the best part, after all that I did not even finish it. I managed to get it in one day late, and the grade was a 81-ish % for our group overall. I have never so desperately struggled with any project at DRSS then I did with the car project. This was my greatest 9th grade struggle and honestly probably, the hardest thing I will ever do in my life.