Let Go My Egg-oh

I never knew I could get so stressed out about working with an egg.  When I stood in the front of the room waiting on line to perform the drop, my heart was pounding with fear of the egg cracking, even when it was in the safety of my hands.  Each time I heard the other teams’ eggs “SPLAT,” it only made the anticipation more nerve-wracking.  Then, it came time for me to represent my group.  I gave Professor Kurpis the paper of the design of my group’s contraption, egg’s name and my group members’ names.  I stepped onto the table in front, extended my arm and “Let go my egg-oh…”  Diablo was no longer in the safety of my hands; it was undergoing its drop of a lifetime – well, the end of its life.  Ahhh, how wretched I felt when it splat… poor Diablo.  

What went wrong?  Why didn’t my team’s contraption work?  After reviewing the steps in the planning process, it became somewhat clear why our plan wasn’t so “egg-cellent.”  Defining our objective was quite simple.  In fact, Professor Kurpis laid out what the goal and objective was, so since we were given it from the start, my group didn’t feel the need to spend time discussing Step 1.  Step 2: My group didn’t fully know where we stood in reaching our goal from the beginning.  We knew we had each other and the limited materials listed in the task to build the contraption and thought that was all we needed to know.  Perhaps if we defined our strengths and weaknesses when we began planning, we would have understood each other better and used what we knew were our strengths as a group to achieve our goal.  Step 3: A lot of the time was used for discussion of the perfect design.  Ideas were getting juggled around and scrutinized for each of their flaws.  Someone took out a sheet of paper, and we started drawing each design out and added details to each one as the paper was passed around.  Step 4: We stuck with the idea of making it sort of like a rocket on both the top and bottom of the egg with straw going around the side for extra cushion in case it fell over to the side.  Then, discussion of how each straw would be used went underway.  Roles weren’t exactly distributed.  We kind of agreed to go with the flow and each step up to the plate when it came time to building the contraption.  Step 5: The plan was executed but changed along the way.  After evaluating what went wrong, perhaps we should have stopped questioning the design we settled on and just went with it. 

We definitely bypassed a few steps in the planning process because of our time limitation to complete the task.  There wasn’t enough time to think everything through.  We may have had multiple designs that would have allowed us to achieve our goal of successfully building a contraption that allowed our egg to be fully intact after a 10-ft drop, but time did not allow us to examine each design entirely.  Though, team work was at its best because everyone contributed ideas for the final design, helped build the contraption and/or watched the timer in the front.  There wasn’t one main leader, but leadership was evident in each member because each person stepped up to play a specific role.  Our planning, teamwork and commitment all played out to our favor, but our time managing skills caused our downfall.  We let time get to our heads and decided to change our design at the last minute, literally.  Our goal towards the end also changed to: Just get it done and make it to the front of the room on time.  Sticking to the original plan would have probably been wiser. 

Haha.. Maybe it was just the name of my team’s egg.  Naming an egg “Devil (in Spanish)” might not have defined its faith in the end in a good way…