FE and Habitat

I just started studying for the FE exam and it's almost hard not to panic. There's so much I don't know. I tried taking a "diagnostic" exam for the morning (general) session and... didn't get very far. I got through most of the math section but I don't seem to remember a lot of differential equations or linear algebra. I think I can get those problems with some reminders of what's what though. The scary thing is when the test switched to sections like computers where I didn't know anything. As in, have never seen questions like that ever. I totally do not remember how the periodic table works. And we never really did materials in such depth. I got tired after a while. I will try the statics and fluid sections tomorrow. Hopefully I will have more luck with those since that's what I do... There's so much material in this test. I have 11 weeks.

Today I volunteered for Habitat for Humanity. We went out to a site where some condos were being renovated because of a fire a few months before. There were almost 20 students from MIT. It was really cold. I think the first few hours was below freezing. And we were working outside, of course. I got stuck with shoveling snow all day long. They had put a huge pile of lumber and it was buried under a few feet of snow. The guy said they wanted to find wood they had set aside to make the scaffolds. So I thought it was a few pieces of lumber, on the order of 20. What he forgot to mention was that that was where they keep all their lumber for the entire construction. So there turned out to be like 200 pieces of lumber buried and frozen under 3 feet of snow. Shoveling snow and throwing it over the fence is a very tiring job. At some point, we realized they weren't going to use the lumber that day and no one was coming to sort the lumber out. So we just stopped working on this. After that, I didn't feel like doing anything so I held the ladder for Mike. This turned out to be a bad idea because I started to become very cold. Not sure why I decided not to wear boots. Anyway, the rest of the people were putting up insulation for the house. Big house so lots of insulation. We didn't even finish.

I feel like this type of volunteering where you just show up and try to help is not very effective. If you have a team of people working together, you would want to know everyone's skills and knowledge. After you work together for a while, you get to know your teammates and things go smoothly (ideally). But we just sort of showed up and while it's good to have help, it took them a while to decide who's going to do what. And the job assignments didn't utilize the available labor very well. I'm sure we helped out, lend a hand, was appreciated. But I just think we could've been so much more effective, done a lot more. We probably hindered some people at their own work too. Anyhow, I learned all about shoveling snow. So if I ever end up living anywhere cold...

Tomorrow, my D-Lab team is having a reunion Yay! We're having brunch at Fire and Ice. Should be fun. Although it's not as if we haven't been seeing each other all the time. I think we all make time to say hi and chat when we see each other. This trip opened up a whole new world for me: Africa. Such an amazing place. It also brought poverty to a whole new level for me. I think I'm just beginning to understand the meaning of infrastructure.