February 8, 2023

Learning to be OK with failure

The first time I heard about GCIL was at the UW Civil Engineering meet-and-greet a year ago during fall quarter. There were several student clubs that had tables set up around the perimeter of the room, and I’d spent most of my time visiting the table where my friend was promoting his club, discussing our classes that we were taking and talking to students who were interested in the club. Eventually I wandered away and noticed there was another club that had a bowl of candy on their table. I wandered over, grabbed a piece and politely started making small talk with the students to justify my visit.

During our discussion, I learned about the GCIL program, the opportunity to learn the more practical side of engineering, to study and work with NGOs, and obviously to travel and live in India. I knew that night that I was going to study with GCIL. Over the remainder of last year, I attended several informational meetings, where I was told that GCIL was a design thinking “boot camp.” During our course last fall where we met to eat Indian food, talk about our assigned readings, and learn about the plans for our in time India, I remember being told that the program supplied a “safe place to fail,” where we can, and should, be honest about our failures. I also remember being told that while our time in India would be fun, it would also be hard and a LOT of work.

I remember talking with a friend of mine about what was meant by “a lot of work.” Ultimately, we decided it was said to weed out students who were only looking to escape Seattle’s dreary winter and spend a quarter in a tropical savanna climate, and I, with my experience having already worked in a professional career, would find the course load easily manageable. I’d have plenty of time to get my assignments done, work with amazing NGOs, and likely have every weekend off to travel and explore the country. I am realizing I grossly underestimated the amount of time it can take to learn and implement design thinking.

One thing I was right about, however, was the amazing NGOs we’ve been working with. Yesterday we had the opportunity to visit with a well digger and his crew as they rejuvenated a 150-year-old well that was over 50 feet deep. When we arrived, they had already pumped all of the water out of the well, and one man had descended to the bottom with a kassi fawda (a type of shovel) to dig the silt and waste and load it into a large bucket. Two men balancing over the well on a rusty wire grate used ropes to haul the full bucket to the surface where another two men dumped its contents in a growing pile before the bucket was lowered back into the well for the next load.

Digging in the bottom of a 50+ foot deep well

A fifth man monitored the water as it continuously seeped into the well, turning on a pump as needed to keep the bottom of the well from becoming flooded. Ramakrishna, the head well digger, took a moment to answer some questions for us regarding his livelihood, family, and the well. We talked about the process of rejuvenating a well – from well identification, community involvement, planning, funding, cleaning out the well, installing a permanent pump to make the well usable again, and finally, a maintenance plan to ensure the well doesn’t fall into disrepair.

We talked to a community member, Vana, who had lived nearby for almost 40 years. She remembered using the well before it fell into disrepair and was excited to be able to use it again. While she has tap municipal water, it’s only available two days a week, and if it runs out, it’s gone until the city turns on the tap the next time. She was also looking forward to being able to save money on tap water as the water from the well will be free.

We watched the well diggers working, talking with members from a NGO, SayTrees, who were instrumental in the rejuvenation of the well as well as talking with Ramakrishna whenever he had a moment, working to gain a better understanding of his life. He told us stories about old wells where he’s found all sorts of relics such as annas, pices, and pies, coins from British India. It was evident that he loved his job working on wells, and when asked if he had any favorite projects, he immediately responded that he loved restoring the old wells because of the historical significance. He was excited to show us pictures of various older wells he’s rejuvenated.

Group photo taken with the crew that is performing the well rejuvenation.

The visit ended by watching the worker in the bottom of the well climb the rope 50 feet, hand over hand, to get out. He’d spent nearly eight hours working in a small hole without a break, not even stopping for lunch. Ramakrishna made sure we took several pictures with him and his crew before we left.

Today, my team continued working on an aspect of our assignment for GCIL. We’ve been working on it for the last two weeks and thinking about it even longer. We’re tasked with identifying a problem, a customer, a solution, and finally, working to make our idea real. It didn’t seem that difficult three months ago in Seattle. My team has worked to identify potential problems only to realize that the people affected don’t seem affected by the issue. We’ve found many solutions that have absolutely nothing to do with what we were hoping to solve. And we’ve covered multiple walls with sticky notes and index cards, only to feel like we were getting nowhere. After hours spent brainstorming, I admit I was feeling discouraged.

The aspect of the assignment that was due today was simple: a story in seven sentences. How hard can that possibly be? We started our brainstorming session today by talking about our struggles over the last couple weeks to identify a customer and an associated problem we would work on. The conclusion we came to this morning was one that I know I’ve heard about 50 times since I came to India: design thinking is an iterative process. It doesn’t start out perfect. But it must start to get anywhere. So we chose a customer; we voted on a problem associated with the customer, and we spent the next 12 hours trying to answer how we can solve that problem (with the exception of a 20 minute break to play a card game and clear our heads).

It’s too early to know if our idea will work, but it is still progress. And if it fails, we’ll know one thing that doesn’t work and hopefully have some clues as to what might work better next time. Until then, I have to be OK with the idea of failure.

By Jody