Goldfish or Cheez-Its? How do you set up a pugh screening matrix? And most importantly, ALIENS?! These were some of the questions posed to us during the first week of SEED.

I’m Xiaoyao, a rising sophomore from the small town of Watkinsville, Georgia. I spent much of my freshman year tinkering with a glossy balloon for my ENGI 120/200 classes. some of the most engaging, stressful, and impactful courses I’d ever taken. I hope to further develop myself through SEED as an engineer and team member and have some fun along the way. After a month away from the OEDK, it sure is good to be back!

We spent the first few days of SEED getting to know each other. I knew some of the Rice interns as friends or classmates and was excited to meet everyone else, especially the students from Brazil. On Monday, we began the day with a series of icebreakers featuring a personal friend of mine, the question ball. From those games, I that we all preferred Goldfish to Cheez-Its, most of us say yes to aliens, and one of us has been to Disney 5+ times (!!!). After some introductory presentations, a voluntary visit to the police, and some quality rounds of Mario Kart, we were ready for our final challenge of the day: a scavenger hunt at the Houston Zoo!

In our teams, we investigated the exhibits in search of clues to the ultimate question: What should you do when you come across a vicious shark? We saw some cool animals along the way, several of which Rebeca had never seen before in Brazil. Several of us ended the day with some ice cream and Dippin’ Dots (a luxury treat for many college students).

On Tuesday, Caz and Sammi gave us a tour of the OEDK. Though I am generally familiar with the different OEDK rooms and locations, there are so many machines and tools I want to try my hand at! Afterward, we hauled an engine and a copy machine from the OEDK junkyard into the basement. Armed with our knowledge of the OEDK, we were let loose upon the OEDK tools of mass deconstruction to carefully destroy the machines. I worked on the copier and was shocked by the number of components inside. Every time I removed a part, four more parts and dozens of screws seemed to be underneath.          

After lunch, we split into groups to work on our cultural presentations, where we contrasted the culture of Brazil and the United States. They were one of my highlights of the week.

Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday were a blur of ICEs, research, and writing as we kicked off the Engineering Design bootcamp. I had heard rumors of the bootcamp before starting SEED. 1 semester of ENGI 120 packed into 5 days… this was going to be quite the adventure.

Our task was to design an enrichment device for the Baird’s Tapir at the Houston Zoo in teams of 3 -4 people. We trekked to the zoo again on Wednesday, where Memory, the zookeeper, introduced us to past enrichment devices and the tapirs themselves. The zoo has two adult tapirs, Noah and Moli. Noah likes citrus scents. Moli enjoys putting her head in plastic tubes. They both look like a weird mix of rhino and elephant, and they both are terrified of Matilda the capybara. We used the information from Memory’s interview and our own research to begin the process of creating design criteria, brainstorming, and assembling solutions. Though the process was occasionally tedious, my team (Team Lion) worked well together and came up with some awesome ideas. I’m looking forward to seeing what our final product will be!

I’m still getting used to the 8-5 thing and the Houston humidity. It might seem strange being with the same people in the same place for 9 hours a day, but with SEED, I think it’ll be alright. Next week, we finish prototyping our enrichment device and begin our major project. Until next time!