Can you take Intro to Engineering?

I’ve never been great at anything to do with electronics or building and sketching.  I just learned how to type with 10 fingers last year, and my only design experience is basic graphics in newspaper.  Nevertheless, when an opportunity arose to try out the new Introduction to Engineering class, I thought it would be a fulfilling learning experience.

After talking to the teacher, Ms. Audrey Warmuth, and scheduling a Monday fourth-period class to sit in, I decided to do a little research to see exactly what I was getting myself into.  I went online to read the class syllabus and learned that the only prerequisite was a B- in Algebra 1 because it was an introductory class.

“Introductory…” I thought.  “I can do this.  After all, it’s just a class of freshmen who have only been learning this for a two months.” 

Ms. Warmuth started the lesson by telling the class to take out their homework to correct.  Since she didn’t have an extra handout for me, I tried to scribble down the questions as she explained them on the projector.  Unfortunately for me, the assignment was on drawing 3-D figures; and with the exception of vectors in trigonometry last year, I have had no prior experience with drawing in 3-D. 

By the time I had finished sketching the question to the first problem, Ms. Warmuth had already finished going over the entire page.  “Darn it,” I thought, “How can I already be falling behind?” 

In an effort to catch up with the rest of the class, I tried to inconspicuously move the paper of the girl sitting next to me in viewing distance.  I cranked my neck to look over at her paper and quickly copied down her answers.  

However, halfway through the page, she caught me and gave me a “Wow, you really don’t know what’s going on” stare. Embarrassed to be caught cheating off of a freshman, I pushed her homework back to her side of the table, like nothing had happened, and turned my attention back to Ms. Warmuth.

It could have been because I was practically clueless on this subject, but I have to say that I was impressed at how much these underclassmen knew.  While Ms. Warmuth explained the answers, many of the students posed super nerdy-sounding questions like, “What is the difference between an object line and an extension line?” and “How do you account for the protrusion in the figure?”

As for myself, I had my own set of questions in mind, “Why do the box thingies have so many holes in them?” “What’s wrong with the lines hanging out of the cube?” 

After collecting the homework, Ms. Warmuth told the class that we would be doing a simple worksheet on measuring lengths.  “Ha! What a joke,” I thought, “Measuring with a ruler? This is something I can do; in fact, it was something I learned to do in second grade.” 

I breezed through the front and the back of the worksheet, never putting down my pencil or pausing.  When I was finished, I looked up and saw the rest of the class still working, and I regained the confidence I had lost during the 3-D figure debacle. 

After everyone had finished, Ms. Warmuth began to go over answers, and my confidence (once again) took a plunge.  Out of the eight problems I had so easily completed, I had gotten a total of zero correct.  I had  been unaware of some important measuring techniques.  

First off, I totally disregarded the precision rule which states that you must go one significant figure more than the measurement given. Instead, I based my answer off the tick marks on the ruler. In addition, I had no idea that you cannot simply round when measuring in Customary (the U.S. system of measurement) units — you must calculate the value in fractions.

While I was busy marking all of my answers incorrect, the girl sitting next to me was once again getting everything correct! It was even more humiliating when Ms. Warmuth walked around the room to see how the class was doing and saw my chicken scratch paper next to my neighbor’s perfect work.

Overall, I thought that my Intro to Engineering trial class had been a challenging and humbling experience.  Although the class was difficult, I realized I would have liked to have take it  my freshman or sophomore year.  In just one period, the class had combined a couple of my favorite subjects, geometry and chemistry, in a new and enlightening way. 

When the bell rang for lunch, I went up to the front of the classroom to thank Ms. Warmuth.  “No problem at all,” she said. “So sorry that you had to sit in on such a boring day, it’s usually a lot more challenging.  If you want, you’re welcome to come again on Wednesday — we’ll be using the software system on the laptops.”

I politely told Ms. Warmuth that I would ask my journalism adviser if I could spend another period in her class.  But in my head, I thought, “BORING? MORE CHALLENGING? SOFTWARE SYSTEM? I could hardly keep up with using a ruler!”