This was our first week working at the OEDK! We started off the week on Tuesday with some icebreaker activities to introduce everyone, and I finally got to meet the interns coming in from Malawi and Brazil. I live in Houston, just a few miles from campus, so it was great to hear from everyone else coming from so much further away. Our first day on the job ended up being much hotter than I expected — we spent the entire afternoon at the Houston Zoo, right across from campus, in small teams doing a scavenger hunt. It was a really nice way to get to know everyone (and my team won the scavenger hunt, so that was a great way to start the week!).
Wednesday we started off with an overview of the OEDK: a tour of the entire building and then another scavenger hunt to introduce us to all the machines and resources available here. Even though I’ve worked in the OEDK before, I had never used many of the tools they showed us, so it was awesome to see everything I might get to work with over the summer. We spent most of the afternoon learning more about everyone’s home countries: culture and history and daily life and universities where everyone lives.
This rest of this week so far has focused mainly on two topics: the engineering design process and giant anteaters. The last couple of days, we’ve been going through “engineering bootcamp”, learning and relearning all the steps of the engineering design process in preparation for starting our main projects next week. To learn the design process, we’ve been doing a combination of online lecture videos, quizzes, and practical work on a project for the Houston Zoo: an enrichment device for their two giant anteaters, Pablo and Olive. On Thursday we went back to the zoo to revisit the giant anteaters, and interview one of the zookeepers in charge of their exhibit. We also got to go behind the scenes at their exhibit to see where they live when they’re not out in public, and to look at some of the enrichment devices the zoo uses for them right now. Today, we spent brainstorming ideas for the anteater exhibit, and it looks like we’ll get to start work on prototyping when we come back next week!
It’s been a great first week at the OEDK, and I’m really excited to keep working with everyone all summer!