Kyle Happy's Individual Reflection

Kyle Happy

ME 250

Professor John Hart

12/14/09

This past semester has been an adventure and an amazing experience. While I now have the gratitude for what was done in the ME 250 class, this wasn’t always the case. I learned a lot about the manufacturing process and about all the little things that can and always do go wrong when the team is fighting a deadline.

During this class I learned many things about the manufacturing process. The lecture was able to cover many different manufacturing ideas and concepts very quickly. While I may not have learned everything about the topics covered it gave me a good idea of what to look for while trying to design our final machine. Also I realized from this class the need to go over all the details of a design project like this before the actual manufacturing begins.

The teamwork aspect of this class reinforced the things which I already knew about working in a team. I tried to contribute to the team as much as possible and be a part of every aspect of the team manufacturing process. I also realized that we as a team need to take up slack from other team members when they need us to, and if you do that for them your team mates will happily do the same for you.

Time management was one of the things which I didn’t expect to give me a problem but it did this semester. While my team and I made the deadlines for all the assignments, it was hard, and we came very close to not making it several times. The reason time management was a problem in this class is not because of failed time management but because of an underestimation of the work which needed to be done on the projects deadlines. Because of this underestimation the project did have assignments and milestones which were rushed more than they should have been and thus the quality of that specific milestone lacked a little bit.

This course was well done but it has several things which I as a student didn’t like. First, the lectures were very dry and boring. While I learned about thinks which became critical in the later process of making the final machine, I didn’t realize how critical it would be at the time it was being taught. Also the actual manufacturing of the machine should have been started sooner then what it was. While my team was able to complete the finished machine in time, the entire process of construction was rushed and we did not have time for much testing. If we had extra time for testing of our machine we may have been able to rethink and reconstruct parts of the machine which didn’t work at first. Another thing which I really didn’t like was the book like test which was given at the end of the lecture section of class. While I realize it is U of M and the expectations are high, I think the expectations should be realistic as well. The test asked for such detail and such long answers that I believe it would almost be impossible to finish the test in the time given, even if the answers were known.

Having said all this, I really am glad to have been a part of this class. It is for the opportunity to participate in classes like this that I chose to come to U of M. The class has some kinks which I hope will be worked out for next semester, but the class was a success and could really become a selling point for why young freshmen should attend U of M engineering.