Aristotle famously remarked patience is bitter, but its fruit is sweet.
Tasks requiring students to invest their time for success in the future can sometimes be a challenge, but this sort of growth in patience has a huge benefit academically and socially. Patience, the capacity to delay gratification, empowers students to avoid temptations and focus on learning. It is this patience that allows them to withstand failure, have faith their efforts will eventually be rewarded, and persevere. Over the last 5 years, the Advanced Technologies and Engineering (ATE) program has offered a myriad of different opportunities for our girls: electronics, solar racing, robotics, even building their own guitars. Each of these projects involves many hours of toil towards a goal which can seem, at times, very distant. It is wonderful to witness the students’ growth in patience as they learn the prerequisite skills to finish these tasks – there are few things as joyous to witness as the pride of a student who has committed, persisted and triumphed.
In 2022, there is an exciting new initiative requiring a huge amount of effort, patience, and delayed gratification from a small group of girls in Years 8 – 12, the QUTE Project.
What’s the QUTE Project?
The school requires several delivery vehicles, and one is reaching the end of its design life. Rather than purchasing a new Ute with a conventional engine, we decided to give the girls an opportunity to build a replacement vehicle. Not only that, the vehicle, when finished, will have an extremely low environmental impact, having been substantially constructed from reclaimed and reused parts, powered by an electric motor with batteries from a wrecked Nissan Leaf, and charged by solar panels. The donor vehicle is already parked in the Art and Design School and has garnered much attention over the last few weeks, your daughter may have mentioned it to you. As this year winds to a close, I would be delighted to hear from students who would be interested in becoming part of the team for the rebuild. There’s no doubt it is a daunting project, as the vehicle, a 1975 Suzuki Carry, has not run for many years and has no engine, gearbox; it doesn’t even have seats. Our team will have to be quite small, around a dozen students, dedicated to completing this unique real-world engineering project. We anticipate working on Tuesdays and Thursdays after school from Term 1 next year.
If your daughter will be in Years 8 – 12 in 2022 and is interested, please ask her to complete this Expression of Interest form or contact Andrew.Draper@queenwood.nsw.edu.au for more information.
If you’d like to donate to sustainability projects like this one, please visit the Support Us page on the Queenwood website or contact Paul.Dennett@queenwood.nsw.edu.au