Europe!!!!! Meeting My Mentor

My Genius Project is not perfect, but one of the things that has completely worked out, without a doubt, is my mentor.
I found her as I was researching online if my idea was original. She is a designer that had worked with kelp as a material for lamps and other sculptors. The first perfect thing, her name is also Julia. The second, which at first I did not feel was perfect, but turned out to be perfect, was that she lives in London. I communicated with her over email, remembering how thrilled I was when I got a response last January. We corresponded through email a few times for I had questions that one would normally ask a mentor. My project was going pretty well and Julia acted as a catalyst for me, someone who did not answer my questions, but gave me hints in order to prompt me to learn things on my own.

Last summer was the set date that my mom, my aunt, my cousin, and I were to go on a trip to Europe.  This trip was planned even before I found my mentor, not only that, but she was going to be in London around the time we were.

Here is a quick detour so that I can tell the story in the order that I lived it.
 This was my first flight out of the country and in the airport I had to have my hands swabbed and checked. I used think that they just chose random people for things like this, so I just went with it and didn't think I would cause a problem. My hand swab came off as positive, so they proceeded to check my bags and bring me into a separate room for a pat-down. They did not find anything, but it definitely was a long diversion from both our trip and this blog post.

Back to what I was writing.
My mentor and I set up a meeting at Central Saint Martins, University of Arts, in London. This was one of the most prestigious design schools in London and she was doing some seminars there. Something that was extremely interesting is that they were setting up the student senior projects. Julia gave a quick tour of these projects and explained how each one either satirically proved a point or solved a impactful problem. There was a story behind each project and I couldn't help thinking that the these projects have the same message that the genius project does. The projects where all so incredible and I could see that same spark in the genius projects that have been introduced at my school. Click to see some of the projects

After seeing the projects, Julia and I sat down to share insight and stories, which is where my story about the airport comes into relevance. I let her know of my occurrence and immediately we had something else in common. It turns out that the same thing happened to her, whereon she divulged into why it happened. It has to do with the compound x that we work with.

I loved meeting my mentor and this chance to get to know someone from out of the country was something I never got to do before. I like to think that is why this part of my project is perfect.

Should Have Seen It Coming

 This weekend really threw me off, but with the kind of project I am doing, I should have seen it coming. To my horror and intense surprise, I pulled back the paper towels that encased my seaweed strips and found MOLD!!!!

This was devastating to me knowing that I would have to restart on all of this work. I decided I would throw it in the trash, go buy some more kelp, and soak it again.

The deal is that this I am trying to make this kelp moist again, or at least not hard as a rock(it would be nice if it was not slimy), and mold loves to grow in moist places. It feeds on the compound that I am using to preserve the seaweed and the recent high humidity did not help. Basically I was angry at first since this had not happened all summer when I left it untouched sitting in the paper towels, but it was happening now.

I decided to do more research on how to prevent this from happening again, because I don't want to make something and have it be unusable due to mold occurrence. I was extremely defeated, but I needed to see this as an opportunity to start fresh. An opportunity to try out different ways of connecting the seaweed strips or even obtaining them. I realized that once I solved the problem I was having before with using to much of the compound in the soaking process as to leave dry residue of it on the outside of the seaweed, the mold would probably not form. The compound would be safely stored inside the cells of the kelp and not on the outside where the mold can feed to grow.

With that said I am starting anew with a bach of kelp already soaked and sitting(no mold has formed yet). I am going to try to use a smaller hole punching method and maybe a different type of string. The process in now revised and more shapely.

With this new mindset, the old moldy strips even came out of the trash and where wiped clean. The mold was only really on the surface, but that is not to say that it will not form again. I knew there would be challenges in this Genius Project, but it is times like these where I can now see it as an opportunity to find out more to make the project the best it can be. Hopefully next time something happens I can skip the bummer and go straight to the optimism.