The thing that I think is interesting about Wisconsin is that it's so big
that all the opportunities of the world are here.
But the secret to making Wisconsin doable
is figuring out a way to make the campus smaller.
So basically, getting involved in organizations, 
getting involved on sports teams,
getting involved in competitions,
all those things help make the campus smaller, you know.
They make the campus into a group of really, you know,
1000 or 2000 people that you're really in contact with
but you still have all those opportunities that a 40,000-person university has.
And I think that's really the best thing about this campus.
So I think there's something about that, I don't know.
I walk around here and I have a sense of pride, too.
I think there's something cool about that, I'm not really into traditions,
but there's something about this campus 
that makes you feel like you should be doing something while you're here.
The Schoofs competition is this competition where you, ...,
have to come up with your own idea.
You have to come up with a business plan that goes along with your idea
and you have to do all this research behind it
to see if your idea has ever been done before.
So what we did this year is we came up with a product 
that helps firefighters traverse through buildings.
It's been a big problem with firefighters.  
We've worked with Madison Ladder 1, we've gotten a lot of support from the school.
We asked them what their problems were 
and then from those problems we came up with all these different ideas.
And we came back to them about two months later
with these new ideas about different things that we could use to help,
help them settle these problems they were having,
from not being able to see through the smoke.
It was so thick they could barely see their hands.
We came up with this idea and they loved it.  They absolutely loved it!
The things that I've learned in this competition and in engineering school
and all this stuff is basically going to carry me through the rest of my life.
The nuts and bolts of physics and engineering really is taught to us
along with the imagination of a child.
So that's what the most interesting part of Schoofs
and basically about engineering in general is...
it's basically you get to imagine all these great things
but then you have the knowledge to actually make 'em 
and do something about it.
If you have an opportunity like this
and you're kind of thinking both ways about it,
should I do it or shouldn't I do it, or whatever?
Like, definitely do it.  Go try it!
In a worse case scenario you win 10 thousand bucks.
Copyright 2006 The Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System
Date last modified: Wednesday, 22-Feb-2006 11:19:00 CST
Date created: Wednesday, 22-Feb-2006 11:19:00 CST