For my capstone, I decided to use the engineering experience that I have and perfect face masks. When trying to perfect the face masks that we now wear on a daily basis I looked at ways to bring comfort while maintaining safety. My first design was to use LEDs and place them around the exposed breathing holes of a face mask to bring the normalcy of breathing in fresh air but still providing protection. After finding that the route I was taking was too complex for my means I instead decided to keep it safe and simple. The idea arose to create a sliding circular object that can be manually spun open/close depending on the environment the wearer is in. I have pictures taken from Fusion 360 to show the original design and the shift of my final product and a video showing the creation of the piece to satisfy my Capstone requirements.

Link to Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GqWipaAcWTg

Introduction:

I would like the readers to see that I tried to include both my own opinion and the connections from the real world. I think when writing this I just wanted to express all my thoughts and my view on the society we currently live in. I would like you, the readers to recognize and understand the story of Ibanez. The story in some way shows the misconception we have about Immigration and the misconception of what happens once someone migrates to a new country. Writing this essay was hard in the sense of I have a lot of opinions and there are a lot of facts the dilemma is how do I write all of this in a way where it’s not confusing.

Full Essay:

A garage full of immigrants sits wondering. Why was this happening? What had they done besides seek refuge in a country that once screamed freedom? What they would later find out due to it making national news was that they were being detained and sent back to their native country due to fear from the American government. The excuses for why this was happening in the belief of what an immigrant brings with them the word immigrant or illegal alien is associated with drugs, violence, and being unamerican. The government that we are supposed to trust in an attempt to unify the world we inhabit has in many ways failed to deliver their promise. Most take the words of our government as truth and in turn have ruined the opportunity to build a relationship with those trying to live the life that we are privileged to have. We live in a country where we judge without having experienced, we respect and listen to the wealthy, but in reality, we have more in common with immigrants than we do with American billionaires and politicians. We just like immigrants have dreams and aspirations, and we in some cases struggle to get by. Compared to the billionaires of the world we are all at the bottom of the melting pot. The cause of this Immigration issue is due to the fear of change in power within American society.

Immigration according to American politicians is a contributing factor to America’s economic growth. But if that’s the case why has it become such a wedge in American society? We now live in a society where change is inevitable, but as just as many people want to see a change many want things to either stay the same or revert to what they used to be. The policy concerning immigration in the US has changed constantly. In 2016 ICE removed 240,255 immigrants in 2018 that would increase to 256,085. There has been an increase in the removal of immigrants from the US and there have been countless policies set in place to try and limit the illegal migration of immigrants. The most recent and in my opinion the most drastic was the zero-tolerance policy which allowed children to be separated from their parents who were unlawfully entering the United States.

After all that has happened the question began to arise, Are our leader’s actions a representation of the country as a whole? Which formed the bigger question Do American citizens understand and sympathize with immigrants? The answer is simply no, we do not understand nor sympathize with the struggle of an immigrant because we simply have not experienced it. In the CBS News article “You have to live in fear” Is the story of an immigrant named Ibanez who illegally crossed the border after his family at the age of 14. He was born in Mexico and while there he lived a life where a meal wasn’t to be expected every day which he says was one of his hardest memories from living in Mexico. His family snuck into the United States, but while they were on the land of the free they were far from freedom while his siblings are safe from having to immigrate back Ibanez and his mother are not. He is fearful that one day will be the day in which he is separated from his family, but until then he continues to go to school and work to provide for his family.

A common misconception that Americans tend to have about immigrants is that once they cross that border their lives and their families’ life instantly change for the better and that is simply just not true. The life of an immigrant is hard it is full of loss, struggle, and pain you are in every sense of the word on your own whether an immigrant is legal or illegal. Due to the policies that exist today that revolves around immigration the relationship that people from other countries have with one another including our own has made things weird in a sense of probable difference of opinion. I don’t think the word immigrant or any synonym of the word should exist. I think as human beings we inherited the land that was left to us and it’s not the property of one single individual or an established group of people. I think it is one thing to have established a set of rules in a society, but when you begin to prohibit others from pursuing their dreams then something is truly wrong.

We are letting the ideas of our government officials create these ideas of who and what immigrants are. Trump recently said, “We have people coming into the country or trying to come in, we’re stopping a lot of them, but we’re taking people out of the country. You wouldn’t believe how bad these people are, These aren’t people. These are animals.” The basis of what America was formed on does not match the America of today and even early America wasn’t what life for an individual should have been. The idea that we are indoctrinated with unalienable rights for the pursuit of liberty and happiness is not present in the laws of immigration and modern-day America.

Works Cited: Shaban, Bigad. “‘You Have to Live in Fear’: One Undocumented Immigrant’s Story.” CBS News. CBS Interactive, November 22, 2014. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/you-have-to-live-in-fear-one-undocumented-immigrants-story/.

Korte, Gregory, and Alan Gomez. “Trump Ramps up Rhetoric on Undocumented Immigrants: ‘These Aren’t People. These Are Animals.’.” USA Today. Gannett Satellite Information Network, May 17, 2018. https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2018/05/16/trump-immigrants-animals-mexico-democrats-sanctuary-cities/617252002/.

Introduction: For my essay, I tried to find the meaning and the affects that failure has and can have on a person and their goals. To find this answer I reflected on moments from my life where I had failed and wanted to quit because of my failures. I am needless to say very proud of my essay I think I took major failures from different aspects of my life and attempted to dissect those moments to find the effect that failure had on my life. One way I think my essay could be improved is to go more in-depth into what failure exactly is and how many people perceive it. I think next time my writing will hopefully be better than it is currently.

Tuesday Morning. I woke up at 3 o’clock with a sense of readiness to siege the day playing Ultimate Frisbee with my brothers. I made it to Von Coln field at 6 o’clock, walked through the early muddy dirt-covered field staining my new white shoes, I started throwing hoping I retained some of my practice from over the summer. I threw a flick and as the disk left my hand I felt nothing but sadness it just wasn’t where I needed it to be, I threw a backhand as I turned my hips and released I saw the frisbee leave my hand and curve to the ground. I realized couldn’t do the things I thought I could do and I was embarrassed and I had no idea what I was to do. “If you played last year you are with me and if you’re new go with Mr. Henkel. ̈” I followed Heinkel and the rest of the group hoping I would walk away from a better player who got back into the groove of things.

But I didn’t because at the time in my frame of mind I thought I was wasting my time doing something that for a certain period of time I wasn’t as good as I should have been I couldn’t pull it off, I had failed at something and after a while I wanted to quit because of my failure. I went home trying to search deep within myself to find out what I wanted to do and how I was going to bounce back after this setback. ̈ Satisfaction lies in the effort, not in the attainment. Full effort is full victory ̈ Is what appeared on my phone during my moment of self-reflection, As I thought back about my day I had to ask myself where you trying or did you give it you’re all. I took a small failure and I almost quit because for a brief moment I lost faith in myself and my ability to deliver the best that I could give. The more I sat and thought about this small thing that happened to me, I understood that the failures that result in quitting happen to many other people, but sometimes on a much larger scale. It isn’t rare for people to let go of their dreams or goals, quitting after not making it to the place they’re expecting to make it to. I couldn’t count on my fingers the number of times I’ve thought or wanted to quit because of the shame that I thought came with failure, but giving up for me is harder than trying. Failure comes from every aspect of life, work, sports, school, and hobbies, but it’s your failures that make you better. I remember my sophomore year in high school, I was taking Geometry and I remember people telling me that this class wasn’t going to be good or that I wasn’t going to be able to complete the course. Hearing all this I went into class not believing in myself and doubting myself because of what other people were saying. We had taken a standards quiz and I had received my grades for each standard and they were mostly all 3s which indicated I needed more practice and should go get help, I didn’t get the help instead I applied myself and removed the words can’t or won’t. I ended up taking another standards quiz and received close to all 5s. The point I’m attempting to make is that I know and fully understand how people’s words or a person’s actions can affect the belief you have in yourself. The idea of everything being easy is just wrong if you know your worth you’ve gotta go get what you’re worth and not blame your shortcomings on those around you. Recently there was an Ultimate Frisbee tournament the first tournament for all returning players and me, needless to say, was very nervous. As soon as we arrived at Holy Ghost practice began. I threw a flic and although is curved a little it was nice and my backhand that followed was a little too high, but it was straight I was ready to play no matter what setbacks came along with it. ̈Jasir!̈ Leahman shouted. ¨Yes.¨ I nervously said ̈Show it to me.¨ Out of the three games I was in three times which I ran for most of it while I didn’t get the chance to do as much as I would have liked to, I didn’t take it as a loss or as a failure I took it as a building block to improve and to show my worth to my team and myself. I have goals and dreams like everyone else and I fight for them because if you fight hard enough the dreams that you dream and the goals that you now wish to accomplish will eventually come to fruition.