Holiday workathon!

Jingle bells Jingle bells Sean has work to do! Were right at the doorstep of the holiday break and lots of the propellers are feeling some stress about the status of their projects. I myself am feeling some of that pressure and stress but after a week of long and hard work in the shop the feeling has faded to a degree where I’m not staying awake at night thinking how I’m going to complete the build.

Over the break Mr. Patrician and Hansen have encouraged us all to spend at least a day or two working on our project in some way. Besides Christmas celebrations, I believe I will be spending the majority of my time working on my project or applying for university and scholarships. The work that I conduct on my project will be focused towards the production of benches to go inside the warming hut. Like last year, I will build these with my dad. Besides building benches, I will also spend a day with Mr. Patrician at school in the shop working on the beginnings of the roof of the warming hut. Hopefully with that day of work we will be one step ahead of the game and more stress will be relieved!

Moving away from work, over the holidays I hope to wind down a tad and spend time with my family and friends celebrating the Christmas season. Anyways happy holidays and I’ll talk to you in 2017!

Happy New Year!

Sean Kohli

Spinning Out or Gaining Traction

Over the last week the wheels have my project have either been furiously turning, or puttering and spinning out. At the beginning of the week I was ready to clean out an entire shop to build the warming hut in, but after some discussion with Mr. P, we decided to use the shop we already had access to and change the way we build the hut. With this new development we quickly decided how to move forward with construction.

The easiest way to move forward was to complete our shop safety within the next two days. The shop safety we conducted was probably the best I have ever been a part of. It was hands on and conducted in a way that I actually learned about the tools and exactly what to watch out for when using them. Now that myself and Josh are both approved to work in the shop, its time to finally get into construction!

When we started construction on Thursday afternoon, we began to build from the ground up. Which means that our first component to build is the skid that the warming hut will rest upon during its time on the river. Once the skid is built, we are looking at building at least one wall per day. Since construction is admittedly starting later than I would’ve liked, a quick and steady pace is needed to finish the warming hut by the deadline.

Since we are coming up on the holidays and the end of the semester, the time crunch is always getting more and more stressful. But, after finally gaining some solid traction, my project is well on the way to completion!

Until next time,

Sean Kohli

Immuinity Fallout

Once again we are at that point in Propel where the stress is truly adding up and causing others to be on edge about the status of their projects. Even though I’ve had this experience before, I am still feeling the pressure of the completion deadline. As well, being a Gr 12 student at NMC means that I am involved with many other extra curricular and regular programming at the school, adding even more stress to my already tight schedule. Adding together all of these different variables left myself very stressed and leaving my immune system very vulnerable. You can probably guess what happened next…

On Tuesday November 29^th I was thrown down by my arch nemesis Strep Throat. It started to appear the day before on Monday, and I took a pre-cautionary Advil to try and make sure I wouldn’t lose any mire time in school. Unfortunately my efforts were deemed worthless. On Tuesday, my tonsils had swelled to the point where I had trouble eating. My mother took me to the clinic so I could get a prescription. Once we had gotten the prescription filled at the pharmacy, I opened the small box and a sheet of 6 pills came out. I was a little skeptical at first, but after the first day of taking these pills, I was born again!

Waking up Wednesday morning, it was like I hadn’t even been sick at all. My tonsils were still slightly swollen but nothing that was making it impossible to eat or breathe. Heading back to school that day I felt very good, I was able to hammer out final details of our material order with Mr. Patrician and send that off to be picked and delivered. Now on Friday the product has been delivered and unloaded into the workshop. Next week Mr. Hansen, Mr. Patrician and myself will be away from school but for unrelated reasons. I’m performing in NMC’s theatre production on Dec. 7, 8, and 9. Which will leave my project at a standstill for a week.

Until next time,

Sean Kohli

Budgeting Time

Throughout the week I’ve been working on creating a budget for the creation for my warming hut. I’ve also been working on two other smaller projects this week, Dru, Connor, and I are producing our health project on the topic of “The greatest leader of all time.” The other project is a small project for NMC’s grad committee, we are working towards hosting a dodge ball tournament as a grad fundraiser at the school. So with a couple of my friends from NMC we have organized the necessary elements to make this possible.

To craft my budget, I spent a lot of time in my SketchUp file measuring out all the different lengths of 2x4s for the framing of the warming hut. With all of the windows and one door in the design, the framing for the hut became very complicated and complex. I had to use many headers, and other framing techniques to ensure stability within the walls. I am still working on developing a structurally sound roof frame, but by the end of the week I will be finished that piece and will be ready to add it into the budget.

Our health project is going to be developed into a non-traditional power point presentation, We are going to essentially create an algorithm that will we will use to find the greatest leader of all time, and while we present we will show the propel class exactly how we conducted this algorithm. The class will get to see why some leaders were obviously unfit for the title and why others were close to the mark but, didn’t quite make the cut. I’m excited to see how the presentation turns out, but Dru Connor, and I still have some work to do until then!

Until next time,

 

Sean Kohli

Semi Simulation

My week has been primarily dominated by the successes through my warming hut project, my experience at LRSD’s career symposium, and probably the worst thing, being sick. I found myself at the career symposium through my extra curricular course at Nelson McIntyre, the Imagine Program. Mr. Magnifico who helps run the course also organizes the event and was in need of student volunteers. I ended up volunteering at the semi truck simulator with some of my friends.

Once we got to the event, everyone was in a hectic rush to get ready before the doors opened. I found myself unable to find where exactly I was supposed to help. Eventually I found where I was going, which turned out to be the big semi truck that I passed on my way into the building… The people running the booth explained to me that their problem was their location, being out in the parking lot away from the action really killed their exposure. Upon hearing this my friends that I was volunteering with devised a strategy to bring more people to the simulator.

We went inside the board office to start gathering interested parties. To achieve this, my friends and I tried to essentially poach people from booths by jumping in and relating it to the semi truck simulator. While using this tactic I found myself looking towards booths that I was personally interested in. I sat down with Christina Legris from Number Ten architectural group. We talked about the different types of architecture, the benefits of studying local or abroad for university, and practicing in different cities. This was the most interesting topic to me because earlier in the semester I attended a panel where the same topic came up and the views were very different from one another. Christina believes if your firm is very diverse that it will be stronger because of all the different backgrounds of the workers. But that notion was also argued by a panel member I heard back in September saying that having a firm of people who all went to the same university will strengthen the style of the city they are practicing in. My opinion is that both views can be very helpful in the office setting and will work towards a stronger firm.

After having a lengthy conversation with Christina, I went back to the semi truck simulator and tried it out. I drove on a rural setting I thought “no big deal highway driving is easy!” Well I wasn’t totally wrong, the worst part was all of the drivers cutting me off and pulling out of driveways, not to mention the driver that ran his car into a tree which fell in my path. Lets just say there might be a couple leaves and twigs stuck in the grill… After all of that I finished the simulator with a good score and an even better experience!

Until next time!

Sean Kohli

Big Boy Pants

Now that we are getting closer to the construction phase of my project, my schedule is continuing to shift and re-adjust to different to the different deadlines and events that have appeared. However, this small amount of stress is all because of another breakthrough in my project.

At the beginning of the week I was in the midst of writing up a technical document about my unique situation in the v. 2017 warming huts competition at The Forks. This was something I didn’t have much knowledge about, so the task seemed very daunting to me. I proceeded to conduct some research on similar types of documents and conference with Mr. Hansen on how to portray my unique position. Once I had finished writing up the document and sent it away to The Forks, I felt a small weight taken off my shoulders

The people at The Forks must have been very eager to see my work because, the next day I received another email from them, which made me very excited, but also quite nervous. I have been invited to be a part of the warming huts news conference next Tuesday. I was blown away, I’m a 17 year old without any credentials of any kind except for my pursuit of architecture and design. I will be standing with full-fledged architects from around the globe who just won an international competition. Now to some this will definitely seem impressive, but from my current point of view, I feel out of place. When the time comes, I will put on my “big boy” pants and will be the best I can be for the Propel program.

I have also finished framing all of the walls of the warming hut. My next steps are to draft construction blueprints and documents filled with measurements, scales and materials. Once that is complete I will work with Mr. Patrician on an accurate dollar figure of what the warming hut would cost.

Until next week,

Sean Kohli

Breakthrough!

After a break of weekly blog writing in the Propel classroom, I’m back with an abundance of stories! This week I have been able to leave the classroom for some learning exploration as well I had the chance to donate blood to Canadian Blood Services. During my time outside of school I was also very involved in different physical activities throughout the week.

I also had a great breakthrough with my project this week. It started it with a simple inquiry to Mr. Wagner about a conversation we had previously about a provided spot on the river trail for my warming hut. This Inquiry led to working with Mr. Wagner and Ms. Smallwood on contacting The Forks and gathering some more information on how to proceed with development and construction of the project.

During the next few days and over the weekend I will be writing and developing documents to submit to The Forks about my warming hut. Once that is finished I’ll move back into SketchUp and continue framing.

Until next time,

Sean Kohli

Harnessing Creativity

Here we are, at the origins of my 2016-17 Propel project. Although I am still planning out how to construct the warming hut, Last year I spent my semester on Google SketchUp designing an interior, exterior and an overall theme. Now I am using SketchUp to essentially make 3D graphical blueprints to construct the warming hut.

We started out this week with some inspiration from Mr. Patrician. He is currently reading a book called Creativity Inc. by Edwin Catwell and Amy Wallace. The book is about harnessing and managing creativity. He picked out a specific exert from the book about the experience Pixar had when developing Monsters Inc. (2001). This exert relates extraordinarily well to the Propel program. I found that the students in Gr. 11 viewed the content differently from the Gr. 12 students. Reading this exert as a student that’s already been through the Propel program a made many connections relating to the previous semester. Hearing the perspective of professionals who work entirely to be creative was very eye opening, especially when hearing about their failures and how they overcame them.

Using SketchUp is beginning to bring back more memories of my old work in the Propel classroom. To start designing frames, I researched different sizes of lumber sizes that I could work with. Then I booted up one of my old SketchUp files of my warming hut and pulled all the pieces apart to start measuring. I will be soon ready to start construction of the warming hut!

Until next time,

Sean Kohli

“Blogception”

Wait, what’s this? Two blog posts in one week! During this week in the Propel world we’ve all been very busy! We started the week with designing and brainstorming ideas for our projects. In the latter half of this week we started our initial drafts for technical proposals. My draft was something I thought would be easy and simple since I have previous experience writing this type of document, I was sadly mistaken.

Even though I have drafted and written this type of document before, I have been struggling more than I thought I would. Since my project revolves around last years work of designing a Red River warming hut, I am having trouble adapting and evolving the content to sound new, but also have a sense of reflection without sounding like I’m reusing content. Quite the interesting writing style, but the importance of this document demands it.

Yesterday we took a break from the project design process, and went to The Forks for an adventure. We were tasked with using a program in the Microsoft Office suite called SWAY, to create a presentation that tells a story of The Forks. Taylor, Shayla, and myself created a story called “Who is Sean Kohli: At The Forks.” This presentation is about a man named Sean Kohli who takes a trip to The Forks and goes to some of his favourite attractions. Besides learning this new program, we also learned about photojournalism.

We are almost ready to start working on our projects. Once the technical proposals are finished, its time to get to work! Now we are at the end of the week heading into Thanksgiving weekend! Over the weekend I’ll be heading out to Luther Village for a retreat. I hope everyone has a great Thanksgiving!

Until next time,

Sean Kohli

Re: On the Rails.

After a period of classroom building, we’ve all started brainstorming and developing ideas about our projects. Some of us have really hit the ground running, and are developing really great ideas. Being the third iteration of the program, I’m expecting to see some projects that either repeat, or are very similar to work of previous students.

On the Rails

This semester I will be building off of a whole semesters worth of work, quite literally in fact. Since last semester I designed a Red River warming hut. I started out my brainstorming with a couple big picture goals already in mind. Mr. Hansen and Patrician had been thinking of using recycled materials in my project to reduce cost and add an environmentally friendly element to the build. I thought of making the design modular, to make the construction, transportation, and overall process easier.

 

With these seeds planted, I needed to do some research, elaborate on them so that they would grow. Thinking that this would be the hardest task, I started out by researching for a place to purchase recycled materials. Within my first Google search I was able to find a suitable retailer for recycled products. Cost, that’s another mountain to climb within this project. Admittedly, my project will be very expensive, so Mr. Patrician suggested that I should try to get an approximation of what the Warming Hut would cost, to do that I sent an email over to a local construction company about an approximate quote on the project. I am currently awaiting their response.

I’m very excited that we’ve finally started to get working on our project work for the semester. Being in this environment always inspires me, and seeing everyone working towards their big ideas makes me feel like this is definitely a superior model of education. With that in mind, lets break some eggs!

Until next time,

-Sean Kohli