When I first came to the University of Waterloo, I was more than a little anxious of what was to come. I was told by many that I was entering a serious program with serious people who were serious about their education. The seriousness of Waterloo engineering could not be forgotten. So, needless to say, I was a little surprised when I learnt that the event in junkyard wars in which I would be taking part in was called “Pop the Cherry”. It was funny, granted, but it hardly fit the image of stone-faced seriousness I had come to falsely associate with engineering students at the University of Waterloo. We stood attentively as we were lectured on the important skill of popping cherries by EDCOM, and then sent off to complete our task. The task, for those of you who don’t know, was to construct a device that could pop the ‘cherry’, which was in reality a red balloon attached to a fifteen foot string floating in the air.
We set off to our task with a smile on our face, for how hard could it really be? Hah, yet another blatant instance of frosh naivety. My teammates and I began to run around looking for sources of wood to build the fifteen foot arm required to reach the cherry….or balloon, whatever. After gathering our materials we swiftly broke apart old chairs, tables and armoirs in order to obtain the wooden shafts we needed for the device. Once the wood was gathered we nailed it together quickly, and hallelujah! We had our fifteen foot long arm……..or so we though. It was a good thing EDCOM, in their almighty wisdom, hadn’t instructed us to build a bridge, for once we picked up our creation it snapped in half, unable to support its own load. Fortunately, we fixed the problem with some engineering ingenuity by reinforcing the linkages between the blocks. Unfortunately, we were informed we were almost out of time and still had to attach a basket at the end of the arm to catch the balloon. It was then that I learn one of the golden lessons of engineering, when you don’t have time to do it right, do it half-assed. We jammed the basket on and were ready to go.
Somehow, our device was one of the better ones in the event, as we were the third fastest team to pop our respective cherry….or balloon…whatever. Although some of my teammates walked away feeling disappointed with the result, I felt satisfied. I had helped engineer a device to complete a task. I also learnt that although engineering can be serious, it can also be loads of fun, even if it is a challenge. Although I enjoyed all of O-week, I think my most vivid memory will be the gratification I felt when our engineered device popped the cherry…or balloon. Now I get Waterloo engineering. At Waterloo any problem can be solved with ingenuity and hard work……and sometimes a little humour doesn’t hurt either, especially when popping cherries. That’s right, cherries, not balloons. I’m just going to have to cross my fingers the general public doesn’t get a hold of this paper. We wouldn’t want them to think we’re in this for fun.
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