Category: Projects

In 2021, I was selected to be one of 30 girls part of the WISE Future Engineers program, run by Engineers Australia. The program sought to promote Subsea Engineering, and more broadly, women in engineering as a whole. The program ran from the 4-8th of October during my second week of school holidays.

Over the 5 days, we met some incredible female engineers and public speakers who taught us various skills and how to be confident in our abilities. They also immersed us in the world of engineering, where anything is possible and any problem can be solved.

Our 5-day program consisted of visits to ERGT, BHP and many more. My favourite place was by far Subcon, where they build artificial reef structures for fish, as coral bleaching is now a worldwide problem. We got to put our handprints in one as well.

At the end of the program, we presented in groups about what we had learned. My group, Team Yellow, did the best presentation, and so I was awarded with a DIY robot I can build at home.

It was an amazing program, which I have made some lifelong friends on, and I will carry those memories forever. It has also opened my eyes to engineering, something which I was initially considering, but am now intending to study at university.

When I was completing the Dramatic Scene Task for English, the capability that I improved on the most was organisation. In the 6 weeks we had to complete our task, my group faced various interruptions, from music lessons that lasted half an hour to full days out of English. This sometimes caused progress to be quite slow, especially in the planning stages. However, we used certain strategies that kept us organised. First, I kept a constantly updated calendar for when group members were out of class. That way, we could manage who was going to be in class that day, stopping us from being unproductive. We planned out our class time underneath that calendar, creating deadlines we could stick to. What this allowed us to do was to come into class knowing exactly what we needed to do, spending less time deciding and more time doing.

Second, when we were creating our script, we employed Microsoft Teams to create a shared document – we could all make changes, suggest ideas and feedback others, even if we couldn’t be in class. It wasn’t just document sharing we used Teams for. The Chat/Posts function allowed us to notify the rest of the group about important changes, such as stage directions and dialogue. If I had an idea that I thought could be part of our Dramatic Performance, I didn’t have to wait until our next class. I could simply post a message and receive feedback. It wasn’t just personal organisation I developed – it was organising people as well, which I think will come in handy in the future. While there were arguably many other capabilities that I developed during the duration of the task, such as effective communication, I can easily say that organisation was the most improved one for me.

In Semester 1 of this year, I was part of a elective called The Great Bake Off. As part of the elective, we learnt a lot of baking skills and applied them across many different events. We had two main projects- Cake Making and our Grazing Table project.

Cake Making Project

We were presented with the challenge to make a tiered cake, with a buttercream filling. First we made the cake base itself- ours was raspberry and white chocolate, since we knew it was a popular cake with good flavours. Then, we used many different implements, such as toothpicks and a turntable, to cut the cake into 3 different sections. We put buttercream between these and froze them.

After removing them from the freezer, we applied the crumb coat, which traps all the crumbs of the cake. After freezing the crumb coat, we covered the rest of the cake with buttercream.

At this point, I was part of the Mamma Mia production, and we had rehearsals most of that week, so I missed the final production of the cake from there. However, I did have a say in the design. We were allowed to use decorations, and I wanted to use a variety of shapes. Our original inspiration was a forest floor, with lots of shapes representing logs and such. These were some of our early sketches, which included wafer sticks, raspberries, and chocolate shards. Later, we also added a white chocolate roll, which is represented with white lines.

I also designed an invitation, inviting one of my teachers and one of my friends to the event, which was in Wanju Cafe-

The event overall, was a huge success. However, we were a little disappointed since we could not get raspberries to put on top. This omitted the pop of colour we wanted, but it still looked good. Here was the final cake- it would have looked so good with raspberries.

Grazing Table Project

Our second project of the year was to create a baked Grazing Table. Each member of the class brainstormed recipes and created two foods – one savoury, one sweet. I chose to make feta meatballs with tzatziki and lemon slice. These were our original sketches-

These were the final products we created-

In this project, we were looking at global problems, and using data to propose solutions. The project was to look at ways that Mathematics could be used to analyse, persuade and engage people.

My group decided to look at the current global crisis – COVID-19 – and find what the most effective solution was. We proved why it was a problem, proposed many solutions, and we concluded that a combination of strategies would be the most effective barrier.

We used the Swiss Cheese Model to show how the faults of one strategy will be covered up by the strengths of the other.

One of the things I learnt from this project (apart from the data) was how varied the data was depending on where you got it from. There was an abundance of data on the pandemic, from all kinds of sources. Judging how accurate a source was was very tricky. Another thing I will try more often is using different ways to show data. I got a very good reaction to the Swiss Cheese model, because most had never seen it before. I also got another good reaction to the infographic I made, showing people really do value different data presentation. I will try and do this more.

To reflect on this project, I thought it was incredibly interesting. I had seen lots of data on coronavirus before, but this time, I was learning new things.

I will attach the infographic and presentation link below.