Bicycle Rope Maker

This Spring semester I had the chance to be in an International Health Class.  Instead of being a boring class filled with reading text books and listening to lectures, we focused on getting hands on experience by actually solving issues that affected a village in Paraguay called Ascuncion.  Because our projects were designed to be implemented in a real community with real people, I think it made us all try a little harder.  BYUI sends a few students and faculty to the village every year or two to implement the projects that students have recently been working on.  Then, they come back to the university to tell us what worked, what didn't, and what we can still improve on.

Our project:
The last group of students that went down helped design a bed that could easily be build there.  Beds are important because there are bugs that live in the dirt that can cause diseases in the people.  Most people in this village are too poor for a real bed, and even if they had a real mattress, it would probably become infested with bugs and/ or get moldy etc.  Instead of using rope to make a weave to sleep on, they found a way to connect plastic garbage bags together because it was cheaper.  The problem came because the plastic bags would stretch out in time.  They decided to try and make rope with twine they had.  They were able to accomplish this, but it took approximately 8 people, 8 hours to hand braid the rope to go on the bed.  That's 64 man hours!  Our task was to design a rope-maker that could be built in a third-world country from supplies they would have easily available to them.

We went through a lot of brainstorming sessions and trials and errors and eventually we came up with the design for our bicycle rope maker.  I won't go into the details of all the problems we encountered building it...but there were a lot.  And we overcame every obstacle so it worked beautifully in the end.  We were able to spin all the rope needed for the bed in about 10 man hours.  Even more motivating to us was the fact that we decided to enter it into the school's Research and Creative Works Conference.  Sadly they placed us in the Junior Engineering category so we were up against the engineering students but we still managed to place 3rd out of the 5 or 6 teams in our division.  That's quite an accomplishment for some health science kids!

This is my wonderful group.  It's a good thing we all liked each other or it could have been a really long semester.  The poster is made of rope of differing materials.  We used yarn (red), toilet paper (white), thread (green), crepe paper (yellow), twine (brown) and baling twine (black, and what we used for the bed).  You can make rope out of anything!

This is all the rope we made for the bed.  We got faster as we went and if we had made it as efficiently at the beginning as we did at the end it probably would have taken less than 6 man hours to make it all.

The main side of the rope maker is designed to spin the twine separately, first.  We used anywhere from two to ten lengths of twine/yarn/ thread in the first phase to create a strong base.  They were twisted by simply turning the pedals of the bike.  If you sat on a chair you could actually pedal it like a bicycle but we preferred just turning the pedals by hand.  

The second part of the rope maker was made by using another bike.  We attached the two parts of the rope on the other side and spun that side to twist the two individual pieces together to make a rope!  We could adjust the space between the two bikes to be about as long as we wanted if we wanted to make a longer rope.

 My certificate!  We win!  Well, at least we didn't lose...that counts as a win for us.

I'm Ranting. Are You Listening?

Wow I am ready to rant.  Sometimes I wish I could just record my rant and play a recording of it because I feel like I lose some of the ranting-ness when I type.  Regardless, I'm giving it a go.

So, what will I rant about today?  I'm expressing my strong feelings about the ungratefulness and/ or stupidity and/ or immaturity of some BYU-Idaho students.  Sometimes I honestly want to smack people upside the head!!!

I don't understand what people could POSSIBLY complain about regarding BYUI.  Okay, I can see how some people wish we had intercollegiate sports...but that's about it.

Here's what's happening at BYUI.  You are coming to an LDS school and paying $1825 for a semester (starting Fall 2013...it's a little cheaper right now).  A SEMESTER.  That's $152 per credit.  ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTY TWO dollars per credit.  Wanna know what you should be paying for a BYU-Idaho education?  Closer to $10,000- $12,000 (one of my professors estimates it's even more then that) a semester.  You are getting your education at an 80% discount.

What are you getting for that $1825?  You get classes with an average of 30 students.  You get professors who know your name, care about your life and want you to succeed.  You get professors who have worked in the real world and who are at the top of their game. You get a fitness center built in 2011 with brand new equipment worth about a million dollars...for free.  You get an amazing gym you can use at your discretion.  Racquetball/ Wallball courts, a pool, and even more gyms.  You get a 15,000 seat top-of-the-line, award winning auditorium.  In the auditorium you get spiritual fulfillment every week from some of the greatest leaders of the church today.  You get hands-on experience in every.single.major.  There's a cadaver lab (with four bodies), 16,000 sq feet of greenhouses and hundreds of thousands of feet of outdoor gardens, an automotive body shop, a welding lab, a woodworking shop, a photography lab, art labs, a state-of-the-art industrial kitchen and bakery, sewing labs, a preschool lab where you actually work with children, an off-site livestock center with all sorts of large animals and animal labs, ballrooms upon ballrooms, newsrooms, broadcasting studios, a geology and wildlife museum, chemistry and physics labs....should I go on?!

Student services.  You have free tutoring for practically any class you could want.  Besides one-on-one tutoring there are accounting, physics, chemistry, economics, math, writing, and foreign language open tutoring centers. Free fitness consultants at the gym.  Free fitness workshops every night including Zumba, yoga, pilates, cycling, abs that rock, water aerobics, Latin Jam, step classes and more.  Free nutrition counseling and full-body assessments at the Wellness Center.  Free any-kind-of counseling by licensed professionals at the counseling center.  A free computer help desk to assist with any laptop/ computer problems you may encounter and 24 hour phone service to assist you if you are at home.  $1 Ballroom, Latin, Country and Swing dances every week with and extra hour of instruction included.  Dirt cheap performances by entertainers from around the country.  Bill Cosby, The PianoGuys, The Chinese Acrobats, Diamond Rio, Jim Brickman, Chris Mann to name a few.

And what do students do?  They COMPLAIN.  They complain because they have to be home by midnight.  They complain because they can't wear shorts and flip-flops on campus.  They complain because they have to go to church and fhe.  They complain because they have homework.  They complain because their roommates are goody-two-shoes.  They complain because they have the wrong track.  They complain because they can't come on their off-track.  They complain because they can't get into a class.  They complain because they didn't get a scholarship.  They complain because there's too much group work.  They complain because they have to go to school through July when their friends were done months ago.  They complain because Rexburg is small.  They complain because there's "nothing to do here."  They complain that the university is stealing their agency.  They complain that the library isn't open later.  They complain that the food on campus is too expensive.  They complain it's too cold/ windy.  They complain and complain and complain. 

I'm sick of it.  I'm sooooooo done and over it. 

I talk to people on a weekly basis who are practically begging me to help them get into BYU-Idaho.  Who would give almost ANYTHING to be here and can't for some reason or another (don't meet requirements, miss deadlines etc).  It breaks my heart when I know that there are so many people who don't have the opportunity to come here and then there are hundreds here who take every last bit of it for granted. 

Yesterday, I was talking with a friend who went on a date with a guy who turned out to be a real jerk.  And that's putting it lightly.  He had no respect for her or for women in general and it made me sick hearing what he tried doing to her.  I won't lie.  I want him gone.  I want him to leave and never come back.  I want him to withdraw from his classes two weeks before finals and I don't want a single thing he did to count this semester.  He doesn't deserve to be here.  I am FURIOUS!  And I have no problem saying it.

Great things come from sacrifices.  And if I have to sacrifice wearing shorts to class to go to a university with everything listed above, then it's a no-brainer.  And I'm not going to complain.  I'm going to be grateful that's the only sacrifice I'm making.  Actually, it's not the only sacrifice.  I'm a fall/ spring student.  So I don't go to school January- April.  Weird, I know.  But because of this system, BYU-Idaho can admit approximately 6,000 more students per year.  When people come into the office to complain about their track, sometimes I want to tell them that based on their application, they probably wouldn't have even gotten into BYUI without the track system.  And I'm sorry, you may have to grow up sooner than expected and find a job out here instead of going home every summer to work at Dairy Queen.  Trust me, I know you can find a different job...you just haven't looked yet.  Welcome to the real world where things don't always go as planned and sometimes you have to make decisions you didn't think you would have to make.  Do you want to come to BYUI or do you want to sell pest-control in the summer.  Yes, I understand you make a lot of money doing that.  That's fantastic!  I wish I could make $30,000 in three months without a college degree.  If I could do that, I'd probably drop out of college and just do that full-time!  So what do you want?  Do you want to come to BYU-Idaho?  Because maybe you're going to have to make a sacrifice to do so.

If you don't want to come here then don't.  There are thousands of other universities you can go to that let you wear shorts and flip-flops to campus and let you say out as long as you want every night.  No one is checking up on you.  No one cares if you go to church.  No ones cares if you pass your classes.  No ones cares what your name is or what you want to do with your life.

Maybe that's a slight exaggeration on some points.  I will admit, I'm sure it is.  But not on every point.

Think about it.  Think about why you want to be here and what a privilege it is to be here.  Think about how many people here are rooting for you to succeed in life!  Think about how many people around the world wish they were in your place.  Think about how much extra sleep you get because you're home by midnight everynight ;)

I know I'm preaching to the choir.  I doubt anyone that reads this (if you've actually read this whole thing you are my new favorite person) that hates BYUI and is now going to change their outlook on it.  But I had to get it out.  Thanks for listening to my rant.  More might be coming soon.

I'm In!!

This is my "YAY!  I got into BYU-Idaho face!!!!"

No, it's not from four years ago...it's actually from yesterday.  I saw on the BYU-Idaho Admissions facebook page that they were having a contest to post a picture of yourself with either your acceptance letter or just of yourself with your reaction to being accepted.  There were only three entries so I had to enter myself.  I mean, I have to support my office!!