The Tools Lying Around My Room
My room is a makeshift workshop. From drills to wires, everything I use to prototype is there. At the bottom of my closet is a broken soldering iron. It’s the same soldering iron I used to create a headset to help my aunt — living in India and paralyzed by multiple sclerosis — control her appliances and TV. The iron met its fate when creating a device to help those with arthritis connect their garden hose to a spigot. On the way to a Shark Tank-like competition at Georgia Tech to pitch the device, the 3D printed prototype snapped in half. Using the soldering iron, I was able to melt the plastic back together, saving the device but destroying the soldering iron. I realized then that one of the most important tools I could use is creative thinking.
Lying on my bookshelf is a kazoo, known throughout my school since junior year. The student body government elections were coming up. One question remained: What should I say in my speech? Every speech I remembered had put the school to sleep. After the words, “Good morning, my name is,” you could hear the groans of kids forced to sit through another boring speech about how hardworking a candidate was. The next morning, I walked into the broadcast room not with a speech but a kazoo in my hand. For the next two minutes, I proceeded to blast Smash Mouth’s “AllStar” into the intercom. The school loved it — a landslide victory secured. Trying to create a better connection to my peers, I was pushed to find common ground between the boring speeches and the equally bored crowd. Finding common ground was familiar to me. When living in India, I learned to speak three languages on top of English. I understood that people are more comfortable when you speak to them in their native language. Like the ear candy of a kazoo, it creates an immediate connection.
Next to my printer is a big red button. Not just any big red button, but a button that has saved countless people from injury. The button connects to robots or drones I build in order to safely disable them in an emergency. Is letting kids drive a 150-pound hunk of aluminum at 12 mph a good idea? Of course not. That’s why we have the big red button. Whether it’s letting kids drive robots, teaching them how to build gadgets at summer camp, or coaching youth basketball, watching them get excited when learning a new skill makes my day, because I know their reaction is genuine. No one is more honest than a child. You immediately know if you did a good job — or put them to sleep.
The area under my bed holds some of my most prized accomplishments. In an orange box sits a device designed to teach the principles of integrated circuits to millions of children world-wide. The summer of my junior year, a Korean circuit maker approached me about wanting to sell in the US. They struggled with making North American audiences understand how to use the device. I spent the entire month of June restructuring parts of their device and rewording their manual to help teachers better understand how to use and teach with the device. The experience showed me that understanding and having empathy for your audience are important ways to connect.
My room is littered with tools, and I am running out of space in my tool chest. What I’ve learned, however, is that the best tools I have collected cannot fit in a box. They are forged by experience, teaching me creative thinking, communication, human connection, and empathy. These are the tools that will help me build my future career as an industrial designer, allowing me to create things that connect people.