Team Tactical Skills and Simple Machines
Inside a Mechanical Engineering laboratory, I experienced one of my proudest educational moments. In a room full of the most methodical and mathematical minds of the university, I shined - even if just for a brief flicker. The group assignment was clear: disassemble then reassemble the gas-powered leaf blower. A boyhood filled with tool tinkering and fixing cars with Dad was about to blow these nerds out of the water! My classmates may have memorized scientific formulas; I had at the moment something much more valuable: relevant practical hands-on understanding. During that college lab assignment, I actually understood what was going on inside that leaf blower before loosening the first screw. Through his workshop lessons, my dad had unknowingly given me the missing pieces between theory and reality. The hours of deconstructing, fixing, and building machines taught me about the relationships between the simpler components of those intimidating and complex monsters. Even a Swiss watc