Notre Dame: Once in a lifetime Opportunity

“When people help people, only good things happen.”

This past week Sonu and I had the pleasure of spending the day with one of our mentors, Mr. Michael Elwell. About a week ago (cue music, do shmoney dance) Mr. Elwell mentioned in one of his emails, the opportunity to travel up to Notre Dame and spend the day with him. We had first thought to ourselves, “That sounds great! But what’s the likelihood of that actually
happening?” Turns out, VERY! This past Wednesday turned out to be a very fortunate placement of one of our school’s E-Learning days. So we emailed him again making sure the offer still stood and it turned into the reality. We were going to Notre Dame!

We woke up a an early 5:30am and so began our road trip to South Bend! After a long two and a half hour drive we had arrived. We met Mr. Elwell in his Industrial Design shop and were excited for what was in store! He began by giving us a tour of his shop. Laser cutters, three-d printers, mold vacuums, literally anything and everything you could imagine. After about an hour of getting our minds blown, we sat in his work office for what we had come up come, Talking about our product.

We talked for about an hour, and I am very blessed for the opportunity to do so. We discussed what we had already done, as well as what was in store for us. He heavily discussed “workslike prototypes” and and “Lookslike prototypes.” Workslike Prototypes are prototypes that are created simply for the function of the object. This is done by using very crude materials, all just for the function of what you’re trying to create. Now a “Lookslike prototype” is created after the workslike prototype. This is the more polished, put into production, type prototype that has an equal if not better function and ability.

After a great talk about what is next in store for us, creating a workslike prototype, he gave us the grand tour of the campus! I’lll tell you what, Notre Dame is the most picturesque campus I’ve ever visited. I loved how rich the University was with History, how clean and well kept the grounds are, and the high quality of education. After the great, but freezing tour, we had the honor of sitting in on two classes. The first class we sat in on was design sketching.

This class proved to be more beneficial than we could ever imagine. That specific day, all the students shared their idea to the class, and then the rest of the class would draw the same idea, from their differing perspectives. About five minutes into the first sketch, I raised my hand and simply asked, “Can we draw too?” And with a huge grin on his face he proclaimed, “Well of course!” We were now apart of the class. For two and a half hours straight we sketched and critiqued, got critiqued, made mistakes, used all of the eraser stubs on our pencils, and learned some great new techniques. It was an amazing class with a great professor

We then sat in on our mentor’s Industrial Entrepreneurship class where we had the privilege of pitching our idea! For fifteen minutes we gave all of our thoughts and actions up to this point on our product and answered a great amount of questions from them. We received a phenominal amount of feedback that we have already implemented in our product design. During the remainder of the class we watched their month long video presentations on the products they were working on.

Finishing up the night, we got a few pictures commemorating the experience, and right before we left he asks, “Well would there be anything you’d like to take home? Materials, Foams… Anythig?” So understand this whole trip at this point had met and surpassed what we expected
to happen. For Mr. Elwell to offer us supplies to take home and use was a kindness unlike we had ever see. So we went into his shop and he starts piling cardboard, different grades of foam, and wood into our arms. We shook his hand and thanked him for everything he had done for us, but I couldn’t help but ask, “Why help us so much? You have no idea how much you’ve already done for us, but why?” And he replied that it was simply the right thing to do. That when people help people, only good can come from it. Such a simple statement really made me think. After we said our final goodbyes we began our long excursion back home.

A trip like that was unlike anything we could have ever imagined, and got us on the right path to making our dream become a reality. We know our next steps and are excited to progress. Thank you Notre Dame and Mr. Elwell for the experience and I cannot wait to tell you all what amazing goals get achieved next. Thank you!