The Big Bang of the First Week

Since this is my first blog, I would like to begin with a brief introduction. My name is Hope Sandra Khasu. I am currently pursuing my bachelor’s degree in biomedical engineering at Malawi University of Business and Applied Sciences (MUBAS). I am looking forward to this internship because I feel it will give me hands on experience with not only projects but working with colleges that may not be in the same field as I am in and is a great networking opportunity.

Wooooooooo! Made it into the MUBAS-Rice 360 internship program. The first day was full of excitement and inside fights to fight the excitement. I arrived at the Design Studio on the 31st of may by 9am. The morning was full of introductions to the machinery in the Design Studio and the rules. Wongani Msowoya, the Design Studio technician, took us through this process. After that we were treated to lunch, were we went to Chicken Inn and ate and definitely had fun with Francis and Hope. The afternoon was basically about introducing us to the Design Studio team; Will, Hillary, Francis, Hope and Wongani. We were also grouped into teams and our main projects introduced. I was put into a team with Jacob Alinafe Mtitimila, Doreen Asimenye Ndovie and Charles Takomana. We also took pictures for our profiles and I enjoyed this activity.

The second day was spent researching our projects while on the other hand still thinking about our third project. This was mainly done on sites like google, ResearchGate and Jurn. We ended up having a lot of information about everything and did not necessarily have a sense of direction. A Needs finding workshop was held on the third day by Mr. Mafuta and Mr. Ng’anjo. It was enlighting because it gave us an initial start to how to go about our project. Initially we had no direction but with this workshop we were given a preamble to the design process which really helped in our project. The fourth day was mostly spent on further research because we wanted to further understand the problem. The team had also started getting ideas so some research was also on how these ideas would work. On the final day of the week, we went to NEST warehouse where we met George Banda. He really gave us some cool insights about our projects and showed us some of the devices that we were trying to make. He also gave us a component we thought would not be found on the market which we felt would really be useful for further studies of these projects.

Overall, the week was amazing, and it was great fun. However, we did experience some challenges like internet being too slow or not internet at all. Another challenge we went through was getting to learn our team dynamics. At first, we all had ideas and different ways to approach the projects however having a team leader, the workshops and getting to know each other has greatly helped us all as a team. I am nervous for next week though because we have presentations on Monday.