Blog Post 7: The Time of the 20%

At the start of this school year, my friend and I were ecstatic to start upon a groundbreaking research project for 20% Time, a mind-controlled helicopter. We were so excited to embark upon a year-long journey to make it.....and then we didn't. Don't get me wrong, we tried. We had the idea, we had a process, designs, a way to create the uncreated. But ultimately, it didn't coalesce. Our struggles fulfilled Murphy's law, an adage saying "Whatever can go wrong, will go wrong. Whether it was the circuit board short-circuiting, or the helicopter's rotors breaking, or the inability of Daniel's laptop to run the necessary software, or the headset's malfunctioning dry-cellor the reoccurring problem of people swearing to help us mysteriously becoming unavailable or just ignoring us completely, it certainly reinforced the concept Murphy was going for. So ultimately, we failed.


Or did we? In my first blog post, months ago, we responded to a post about the inability to fail, a precursor to the 20% Time project. So if I'm not allowed to fail, what did I learn? I dabbled in computer coding, learned about the physics of electrical engineering, and how a helicopter worked. I learned about the inner constructs of the human brain, about electrical impulses, and how they control our bodies. I learned how to solder, and most importantly, how to ask for help. So, sure. Physically, we may have failed, but the intellectual repercussions are boundless.