Video Fridays: Egg Drop From Space

It was never my plan to spend 15-years of my life as a Communications Technician for the phone company, but through the experience I learned and became adept at technology troubleshooting. In fact, a large percentage of my career was spent in that activity. That’s a lot of thinking through failed electronics. I was good at it, but it was never something I cared about, beyond wanting to do a good job. So, when I switched careers to public school teaching (this month is the 30th anniversary of my “early-out” from the phone company), I was eager to pivot to teaching writing and journalism and even history (from my Religious Studies/Biblical Studies background). But almost immediately I found myself using technology, often personal technology, to bridge gaps that I found in my classroom. It was such a thing that within three years I was developing and managing a technology Magnet Grant for my school and that led to spending the rest of my teaching career teaching some form of technology. In fact, I spent the last nine years of my 28-year career teaching robotics, which is very much about technology troubleshooting and engineering. So much for leaving the engineering and troubleshoot I learned with the phone company behind.

**1979-1995-the-pacific-bell-years-04-anhm01-itt-t-cxr-equipment**

The reason I bring all of this up is because this extended video is all about this man, Mark Rober, and his desire to engineer the perfect device that he can use to safely drop an uncooked egg from Space. There’s a lot of failure analysis and teamwork involved, which are two things that I continually emphasize when teaching robotics to students. No one does this alone and no one extends the field without a lot of failure to overcome.

There’s a part where we need to acknowledge the emotional drive behind our desire to succeed and conquer or address a challenge. But we have to set aside that part of ourselves to work the problem and find the solution that’s going to work. A little excitement or anxiety can help motivate us, but too much and we won’t remember how to tie our shoes. That’s one of the first things I learned watching a brilliant phone company technician whom I worked with, if he at all got pissed off at the equipment, he wouldn’t see the answer to the problem even if it was right in front of him. That was my take away from my many years as a Comm Tech, there’s nothing wrong with emotions but after you’ve punched the waste basket in frustration, take some deep calming breaths and rethink the problem. I’m reminded of all of that watching this video. Enjoy.