continued from Part 1

Later, we discover through another test that the strings are inadequate: they broke during testing. Someone comes up with the idea to use caution tape instead. The group sets off to rebuild the parachute and finish the poster. We split up to do so. I ditch the poster to let the girls bond over it.

All the guys are up in the lounge, rebuilding the parachute. Yeah, right. Cutting caution tape and tying it to a section of a grocery bag and army man is not a 11 person job. One guy rebuilds the parachute. The rest of us are watching TV and/or playing cards.

The next morning, the group reconvenes to work on the presentation of the parachute. The poster is not enough. Eventually, the presentation develops into a news broadcast format beginning with a reference to the downed original army man. My contribution? Yes, I did contribute — I felt guilty about the poster. I didn’t get to write it. I wrote the second draft. Minor edits. Note that I said second draft, not final draft.

Anyway, the presentation is a hit. Everyone else’s is boring. Some kid had a CAD presentation. For a glider. One that didn’t work too well, at that. Another group dressed in togas and gave themselves Greek names. Wow. And that relates to their project, how? Don’t look to me for the answer, I think I was asleep or zoned out during that part. Granted, it’s hard to make that kind of thing entertaining, but hey, my group succeeded.

Our parachute puts on an even better performance. After watching the parachutes do not so well, and the gliders dive-bomb, I was wondering how well ours would do. We send our representative up, he drops it. It falls rather lacklusterly. Then, about half-way down, a gust of wind picks it up. The parachute flies over everyone’s heads and off into the sky. Over the farm area. With my non 20-20 vision, it goes out of sight.

Controversy strikes. Were we disqualified because our guy let the parachute go before the judges said they were ready? Even if they decided docked us 30 seconds, we still outperformed the others by far. But a disqualification, that would set us back…

One hope was a redeeming second flight to seal the deal. The second flight was less awe-inspiring. However, we still did better than 99% of the groups. Another group also had a parachute a gust of wind picked up, but it didn’t even come close to the height ours went.

Awards are later presented, and our group triumphs over the controversy. It was too obvious that we won for them to disqualify us. We didn’t win for best presentation because I guess they wanted more groups to share the prizes. Whatever. Just a piece of paper.

At the time, it felt great to defeat everyone, but in retrospect, what was my contribution? Let’s see, I made some minor edits to the presentation. I started a mural on the chalkboard, but didn’t draw a thing on the poster. Hm…

Hey, I came up with the idea to split us up into committees! That was a good idea… even though other groups also split into groups…

So, what was my one unique contribution to this project? The word “committee.” Speaks volumes about me, doesn’t it?

I think it means, I’m not cut out to be an engineer. (Well, that wasn’t the only thing that convinced me, but I’ll save that junk for later.) I don’t want to help design and build something where I only contribute one tiny piece… or one tiny piece junked before the final design is created. Even winning so greatly didn’t inspire me to be an engineer. In fact, they weren’t even going to allow parachutes for the next session of engineering camp. Still, no go for being an engineer.

I noticed that I touched the parachute maybe once. I’d rather be in a position where I could tell people what to do, like, split up into “committees.”

That’s what I learned about myself, anyway, but what do you care? What can you learn from the parachute thing? If there’s too many people doing one project, shirk from most of the work, and then proceed in taking the credit.

Oh, that’s not a very good life lesson. But hey, what can I say? You got the cynic’s point of view. There is no uplifting lesson in here.