Welcome to our blog post about our innovation project. If you did not know, the 8th grade innovation project this year was about building a sled by using simple machines. In this project we were divided into multiple groups made out of 2 people. This is a summarization of what I was told at first about this project. After I was told about the project I was honestly a bit worried because I barely knew anything about the simple machines because I did not understand them and also because I could not imagine myself finishing this project in time. You would maybe expect for me to say that in the end it was okay and all, but that is how it felt for almost 100 percent of the process.

Although one of the biggest challenges with this project was the deadlines, ultimately the hardest challenge was the building of the sled. This was because no matter how much research I did for the building part of the sled, I would all the time while building second-question myself about if this was a good idea, or this was a bad idea and on-and-on-and-on. Another factor to this was that it was hard to finish it in time which had it go hand-in-hand with the deadline problem for bonus. Even with all these obstacles, we still made a decent sled in time.

After we finished the project, all we had to do was present it to the judges. While presenting I had a few stutters here and there, but overall it was fine. After presenting I felt relieved because for almost every second working on this project, I had the urge to just scream out that I quit and fail on this project because this was easily one of the most infuriating projects I have worked on. But I am also happy that I didn’t do that and just tried my best.

Looking back on this project, I absolutely hated it but although there were plenty of negatives, there were also several positives sprinkled in. For example I learned many things like how to build things and how to make a plan for things and more. The most important of these things I learned was how to improve as a partner.