My Olympic Dream

Orientation continued today, with a full day's worth of seminars about teamwork. Drs. Thompson and LeBaron spoke, sharing items from their research about successful teams and how to manage team dynamics. We had a few team exercises, but none that were as fun as the paper airplane building contest.

Each team was given a plastic bag containing identical elements. Each team had 30 minutes to build an airplane, focusing on distance and duration. Duration as we flew in multiple heats. We decided to go with something atypical. After deciding against a ball of paper, we decided to leverage alien technology and built a UFO. We taped multiple layers of card stock together, with the three pennies they gave us spaced around the outside to give even weight. By curving as we taped the edges, it had a good shape. We were ready to rumble.

Thirty teams went in heats of five. We won our first heat. The six semi-finalists went in two heats. Three of the six semi-finalists had used the balled-up paper design. We won our semi heat and went up against a ball of paper in the finals. "The shot put vs. the discus," I cried. Dave, our designated thrower, tossed the disc to victory. Our little disc won! It was a good feeling.

Clara and Kristin picked me up after the seminar finished, and we decided to get pizza to celebrate my first grad-school weekend. To save on a tip and delivery fee (Papa John's ... $2 delivery fee is a bit much) we called in our order. We then spent the twenty minutes burning the tip and delivery fee savings by driving around Provo. We picked up 27 Dresses from Redbox, then headed up to the streets above the temple. Check out the view:


Back at home with pizza consumed by Kristin and I, Kristin snapped a couple of cute shots. Enjoy!