It is 23:12 pm and I am writing from the Studio V headquarters. In a week from today we will be relaxing by the beach somewhere in the Bahamas with a pina colada. I can almost taste it now. That and a mixture of metal and wood shavings, glue and sweat. We are working at full speed, putting 12-14 hours days of work and still have a lot to finish. Of course no project goes down smoothly and there are always mistakes. Everybody deals differently when they make mistakes, however below is a proper way to deal with them:
How to deal with mistakes
- Stay calm. No reason to panic. Recognizing and addressing the mistake is a vital step.
- Admit it. Even though it’s uncomfortable, just take a deep breath and do it. Say: “I made a mistake. I’m sorry. I’ll work to make sure this doesn’t happen again.”
- Fix it. Don’t wait around. Do your best to solve the issue before it gets bigger.
- Don’t place blame. It’s a waste of time. Studio V solves problems together. Making mistakes is human.
- Learn from what went wrong. Go back, find the root of the problem and correct it once and for all. Then move on!
Of course that is not how we do in Studio V. Below is our procedure:
How to deal with mistakes in Studio V:
- “What the fuck!?!?! Who the hell screwed up?! Who measured wrong?
- That was not me. Pretend mistake did not happen.
- Stand around for 10 minutes. Wait for somebody to walk up. Discuss. Stand around for another 10 minutes. Wait for somebody to walk up. Discuss. Call Pastre over. Discuss. Wait for Pastre to fix it.
- Blame the guy at the computer. Or glue. Or band saw. Or somebody who is not there.
- Repeat the same mistake 10 minutes later.
Below is the pictorial evidence of our mistakes throughout the semester:
We came up with our slogan after these: “Measure once. Cut. Weld. Measure again. Cut again.”
We still can’t figure out what went wrong here. But the holes did not line up so we extended the beam somewhere between 1-1/8″ and 1-1/2
These were wrong all the way around. First they didn’t line up. We extended the beam. Second they didn’t line up so we cut them off and re-weld them.
There are a few things wrong here: first the post is too long (or so I think), second the plate had to be enlarged to accommodate the post, third the post is in the wrong place.
Apparently that is not how you glue stuff up…. Thanks to D.Pastre who was able to fix this one for us.
This is when we decided to stop drilling and start welding. Drilling took way too long+we had alignment issues… as you see here.
Long story short: Min Ji did a lot of unnecessary grinding, she then re-weld the piece .