Hi! My name is Renee Wrysinski, and I’m a freshman at Duncan studying Electrical and Computer Engineering. I’m originally from Colusa, a tiny farming town in Northern California. For context, my home county has about three times as many acres of almond trees as we do people, so moving to one of the largest cities in the country for was certainly a bold choice, but so far in my time at Rice I’ve found a community that makes me feel right at home :‍) Whether I’m playing in the MOB on bassoon (possibly the most impractical instrument to take on a football field), meeting with fellow ShELECs, or just hanging out with my RESPie besties, I’ve found no shortage of spaces and groups where I know I’m welcome.

Without a doubt, the OEDK is another one of those spaces that makes Rice feel like home. Despite the relatively short time I have been a Rice Owl, I have already made quite a few memories in the OEDK. In fact, I even managed to get a head start, spending long days in the OEDK before matriculation thanks to the six-week engineering design track I was in during the Rice Emerging Scholars Program last summer (which I have affectionately dubbed our “ENGI 120 speedrun”). Even though not all of the memories in that course and ENGI 120 were the most fun to experience in the moment (shoutout to past prototypes for finding the most inconvenient times to fall apart), I keep coming back simply because I love to make new things. Creating in basically any form has always been one of my favorite things to do, so the collection of things I have made in the past is pretty all over the place and it’s hard to choose examples.  However, one that I am particularly proud of is a plush frog I made using a decades-old pattern passed down to me by my aunts. Just look at this little guy! (In case it wasn’t already clear, this is also hands-down my favorite of all the things I have made and it’s very exciting to have an excuse to tell people about it.)

The first of many frog plushies (dare I say… the fore-frog-ther). His name is Emmett :‍)

This semester, I hope to learn how to use technology in the OEDK to keep makings new things and solving real-world problems. Even though I’ve already spent many hours there, I have so much more to learn about the different tools that I have access to. Hopefully, I’ll gain the skills I need to build small wooden furniture for myself (customized to be just the way I want it), as that is something I definitely want to make sometime in the future. In ENGI 210, I also hope to learn more about using 3D printers; I have always wanted to know how to use one, but I have basically no experience and the idea figuring them out on my own has seemed pretty daunting. Overall, I’m just really excited to get to make lots of different things this semester. Not only will what I learn be useful during the rest of my time at Rice, in my career, and in life in general; learning it also just seems like it’s going to be really fun!