The Dare

Retrospect is always a blessing and a curse. Personally, it always make me smile. This semester we as the honors class took on some lofty ideas. I had the honor (Amy please note the pun) of leading half of the class to build a trebuchet. This siege weapon is similar to a catapult. The most significant theme of this project was each step was more difficult then planned or even imagined. Most of us thought it would be easily knocked out in an afternoon, however it took well over eighteen hours of building time. The most impressive quality of the project is the team members who didn’t quit and sacrificed valuable time, skipped meals, and perspired to get the job done. Now, there are two highlighted or “kodak” moments that I experienced throughout the project. Ironically, none of them happened during the planned showing on Friday night. The second best moment, and the most humbling came after both the launching of the firearm and the Shakespeare performance. The whole night I was fuming because the trebuchet did not go near as planned. It worked perfectly, consecutively the night before without any problems. The next evening, however, it seemed as if it could only perform 20% of the time. Turns out, we had seemed to fix every problem except for one simeple problem and I was too blinded by my own frustration to see it, despite many others’ warning: we had to much counterweight. None the less, a few hours after the firing (or misfiring most of the time), one of the team members had preserved and wrapped up the launching pin and gave it to me. As moving as that moment was for me, what happened the previous night meant even more. The word trebuchet is not very common, neither is the sight of one. During the designing and even building process there were some that doubted and still others that did not realize exactly what they were making. But, on Thursday night, when the beast was created. I got to see others and myself building something greater than we could have imagined. My hope is not that the next Honors class would build a trebuchet (of course they can if they want) but rather, that they would dare to do something that makes them grow, fail, and succeed. I wish that the returning and upcoming students would tackle something that is unattainable.