This picture above is a glider my lab team and I designed.  The process of how we designed the glider is very similar to the leadership we learned in DSWS, listening to everyone in the group, and not judging any idea until completely espoused.  We made sure everyone had part in the design and the construction, even if I was only responsible for the constructing the tail of the glider.  No one held themselves higher than the other members of the group as we were equally capable, and every person understood their roll.  This way of us designing the glider led to us have one of the best gliders in the class, even if the balsa wood on the glider would fail us, warping on the right wing, causing a slide-slip motion.

This highlights how DSWS has changed me over the short two year I have been in the program.  I was less open to other people’s ideas on projects, to the point I would work on everything alone.  Now I actively seek out other people’s opinions, form groups to study and to do design projects.  This shows how DSWS exceed my expectations, which to be quite honest, I do not remember all that well.  If I am being honest I expected DSWS to be more of a living community, with meetings.  Obviously, Dunn Scholars is not that, is much more organized and directed towards personal development.

I will say as time went on my expectations of DSWS changed, and those were never met.  The preaching about the wide variety of opinions and points of views were never actually shown through who talked at the meetings.  It seems as if there only professionals from three areas: sports (journalism and operations), medicine, and wellness.  We never had someone from a traditional industry like finance or accounting come.  Nor were there any engineers to talk about what it is like.  I still to this day can only guess what the actually industry is like, only my brief experience working with my dad has taught me about it.  DSWS cannot talk about variety and different view points and not actually deliver on that.