About 5 years ago, my father and I decided that we wanted to build a permanent duck blind to install on a private pond that we owned. The pond is approximately ten acres in area, and during the hunting season, ducks tend to group in the south center part of the pond, which is too far from the shore to take a shot. Building a duck blind that we could place roughly fifty yards off the shoreline would allow us to hide from the ducks, but still be within firing range. Building the blind was surprisingly the easy part, and after about a week we had it finished and ready for transport. Our plan for installing the blind, was to hammer four twelve foot by four inch beams through cut out holes on each corner of the blind, into the lake bottom. These four beams would allow the blind, which sits on a large block of styrofoam, to rise and fall with the water level of the pond. A good idea it seemed at first, but as we were to learn, we hadn't taken all the factors of the situation into account. The bottom of our pond was made up of about 2-3 feet of just mud, and when we came out to hunt for the first time, we were sadly presented with a blind that had come unanchored to the bottom of the pond and floated away and rolled over. We repositioned the blind and thought that maybe cementing the posts into the mud would work. This did in fact work for a few weeks, but when the pond froze over for the first time that winter, we found out mother nature still had one more task to overcome. We arrived for another hunt, only to see our duck blind capsized in the middle of a frozen pond. What seemed to have happened, was the ice expanded in size and popped the cemented beams out of the bottom and again the blind rolled. At this point I presented an idea to my father that I had been withholding, because I felt that it was kind of silly. I suggested that we by a couple ropes, tie the ropes around the base of two large trees and then to the blind, and then re-cement the posts into the lake bottom. The ropes have the slack taken out of them so that they are pulled tight, this, along with the posts holds the blind in place, and is still working to this day. We do still have to occasionally hammer a post back into the bottom of the pond, but we haven't showed up to hunt and had to fix the blind since then.
Conner's story:
Everyone has solved a problem with a creative solution in their life, whether it be a large problem or a small everyday nuisance. The most recent problem that i solved creatively was the latter of the two. The car battery in my car died on a cold icy day. My best friend came over to my house to help me change it, but we ran into a problem fairly quickly. The bolts that secured the battery in place within the engine compartment required an Allen wrench to remove, but there was an obvious design flaw. There wasn't enough space between the side of the battery and the side of the engine compartment to turn the longer end of the Allen wrench. So after nearly an hour of fruitless attempts to remove the rusty bolt, i had the idea to flip the Allen wrench over and attempt to turn the shorter end of the Allen wrench. This created the space we needed to turn the bolt, but didn't allow for enough leverage. So I had the follow up idea of using a screwdriver as a wedge between the side of the battery and the short side of the Allen wrench. This provided just enough extra leverage to get the bolt loosened enough to finally remove it and allow us to replace the battery.
Ryan's story:
Only a few days ago actually I encountered a problem myself that took a combination of jerry-rigging and creative thinking. My girl friend shows horses and has won over three hundred ribbons, which are the equivalent of medals. She wanted to put them up in our house, so I came up with the idea of creating a ribbon rack that stretches down the wall of the hallway in our house. So on the day I decided to finally create this rack I walked into the garage “gungho” ready to build an amazing rack. Well I soon found that I did not have nearly as many of the material I thought I did in my head. For wood I was limited to a couple of 2x8’s and a bunch of plywood, some graffiti covered courtesy of my friends. For supplies I had a tool box of various tools ranging from wrenches to a drill but no saw. So after I made a quick trip to Lowes and got a saw and some orange and black spray paint to make it look nice, I could finally start. The first problem came up when I found that I had absolutely nothing to use as a work bench. After some walking around I came across two cinder blocks in my backyard, so in short work bench found. For the most part cutting the 2x8’s into the right shape went smoothly. The next problem came when I needed to cut the plywood into strips so that the ribbons could hang on something but every time I tried to use the saw the plywood just splintered and broke apart. A little frustrated I dug through my tool box and found a box cutter and decided that it wouldn’t hurt to give it a shot. 30 min later I had finished cutting the strips of plywood with the box cutter and then snapping them off like a Kit Kat bar. It was finally time to install it on the wall after spray painting them. This is where it gets fun as I had 4 anchors for the dry wall. When I finally screwed the board into the wall I found that the screw that came with the anchor was too small and the entire board could just slide out. So I ended up having to screw a screw twice as large as the original into the anchor to make it stick and use some zebra duct tape nicely supplied by my girl friend on a piece of plywood that splintered and was starting to break. Well after all that it seems to have turned out well; here is a picture of the first section of the finished product with some of the ribbons on it .
Conclusion:
Problem Solving is a skill that is utilized by nearly every person on a nearly daily basis. It is not a skill that everyone just naturally possesses, however. Despite this it is an invaluable skill that everyone should know how to do, and continually work on throughout their lives. These ideas are all demonstrated by the three stories above. In all three stories there is a problem presented, which is then contemplated. The next step is enacting a solution, Austin had his solution to the duck blind problem, Conner had his solution to the poorly designed car battery, and Ryan had his solution to a lack of proper materials. This demonstrates the way in which problems are an integral part of every person's life, and thus so is problem solving.
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