The Notorious All-Nighter
It was just before midnight. My Biomedical Engineering Design teammates and I were putting the finishing touches on the most important academic work of our undergraduate career. Over nine months, Amanda, Brandan, Balvir, and I had conceived, designed, and built a prototype of an oral endotracheal intubation aid to safely intubate patients with cervical spine injuries. We finished sprucing up our prototype with a fancy storage box for the wires and sensors and dressed the device with a bowtie and pair of sunglasses. It was working perfectly. We reconvened at 12:00 AM for another run of the presentation and were all satisfied. I was on my way to a few deserved hours of sleep when I noticed Balvir shaking the prototype in agitation. The device had stopped working! After an hour or so of panicked investigation, we discovered that the storage box fashioned for aesthetic reasons crushed some circuitry elements and silicone found its way into a source input. There was no way to obtain new parts. We had to somehow rebuild our device. The team got to work. Amanda and I disassembled the mechanical arm. Brandan and Balvir set up their testing apparatus. We took the circuitry apart to salvage as many working parts as possible, borrowed a few things from a supply cabinet in the lab and five hours later, just before the sun began to rise, we had a working prototype. Not as good as the night before, but working. I was the first presenter out of all of the design groups. The auditorium was packed. The six minutes of allotted presentation time flew by, but I was able to cover everything. I was numb and tired, but done. As I stepped from the podium, I saw nods of approval from the faculty judges and the auditorium was clapping. I glanced to my teammates in the audience and they were sound asleep next to each other. Just as they always did for me, I knew Amanda, Brandan, and Balvir had made the effort. I sank into my seat next to my snoring teammates with the knowledge that, for this year, my teammates and the Biomedical Engineering department became my Columbia Engineering family.