An upper year Engineering Physics student told me at the beginning of May that this would be the summer where “they take all of you and put you in a room to mash and force you into a cohesive whole.”

It’s not the most pleasant description, but in hindsight I see his point. In the first half of the summer, we took 5 courses in 6 weeks. The second half was all robot making, all the time.

How much robot making? Well, on a typical day in the second half of the summer, the lab opened at 9am and closed at 7 or 8pm. In later weeks, the students would beg our TAs and instructors – or bribe them with food – to stay longer and keep the lab open. In the final two weeks, it was normal for people to stay until midnight, and in the last few days, some people pulled all nighters.

All of which resulted in: