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Coming into civil engineering, I didn't really know what it was, and
that was the foundation of me joining concrete canoe. We really
learned a lot of things from class and you get to apply them here.
When I go off campus and talk to professionals and they say are you
involved on campus, I say yes, I'm part of an engineering sorority,
I'm an officer of the ASCE, I'm on the concrete canoe
team. Then they take a step back and say, what's concrete canoe? I
say, it's a team at school full of civil engineers and we make a canoe
out of concrete and we race it. They look at you like you're crazy.
They say, you make a canoe out of concrete? How does that float? We
say, well we use lightweight concrete that's less dense than water and
we just make magic happen.Concrete canoe is like a family here, you
get to know each other really well,you are here all the time. We are
really open to new people and it's a lot of fun.I joined the concrete
canoe team because I thought it was a really cool idea to
be able to meet other engineers and get out of the classroom and apply
what I am learning in the classroom. A big thing that's helped a lot
was knowing a lot of older people in the same major as me to know what
teachers to take, which classes, if I need help with class or
homework, they got my back on that.Sometimes, it feels like it's way
different than what you learn in class.Because what you learn in class
is all theoretical. But then when testing concrete, you really realize
why everything's arranged in class and nothing's cookie cutter for
engineering, because you can't really predict anything with
all the factors. So that's pretty cool to see the real world that
yeah, you can use your theoretical as a base, but it's only a base.
You have to still do some tests to figure out what's really going to
work.Right now we are here at the Santa Fe dam and we're right in the
middle of our concrete canoe competition for paddling. We've been
practicing since September so I am so excited to finally show off the
hard work that we've put in. We went out almost every weekend and
paddled and we practiced and I've been sore for months. So I'm really
excited for today to go out there and just get on the
water and just pull it as hard as I can.The whole project of concrete
canoe is you design, analyze, construct, and compete a concrete
canoe. Our budget for the year is about thirty grand. We've
been working on this project since June, getting all the details and
all the design and what we want to see for the next year's canoe,
going back to what we thought was wrong with last year's canoe and how
we can improve from there.Being able to work concrete canoe I feel has
helped me out in my classwork and it will help me out in the industry
itself.The students have to do everything themselves when it comes to
building the canoe. You have to do all the analysis; you have to do -
designing it. You really have to think about it and when it comes to
actually building the canoe it's all what you in the classrooms and
you have to incorporate it into this club. I joined concrete canoe
because I was a transfer student and it just got myself out there and
I got to know a lot of people. I came here not knowing
anybody and I met a great group of people. It was something that
really put me out there and gave me a core group of friends to hang
out with. It was really fun and exciting.