"El Papiazo" Progress - Update 6, Spring Quarter Week 3

As we continue to make progress on the document we're preparing for next year's team, the document has begun has to take on some character of its own. For starters, it has been dubbed "el grab papiazo" in reference to its all-encompassing, all-powerful nature. The tradition of naming our work dates back to when we first started naming our roofing ideas. To an outsider, such antics may appear counterproductive to the mission of our team to deliver high-quality, thoughtful work grounded in engineering principles. In our view, however, this perception is flawed. As we see it, you name the things you care about. We care about our work and the names are symptomatic of this passion. 

Furthermore, there is some practical value to our team's antics. One of the learning challenges in preparing this document has been understanding the difference between writing for technical documentation and writing to tell a story. Next year's team will have access to all of our technical documentation. The purpose of el gran papiazo, however, is to tell a story that Peru Structures team 2021 can read and learn from. At times, the technical, precise nature of documentation is advantageous. However, such documentation often excludes the nuances of the process of arriving at the technical figures in order to preserve concision and clarity. Though el gran papiazo is on the longer side, we hope that it will prove to be readable and nuanced in order to fill in the gaps inherent in our technical documentation. 

In the spirit of this nuance, in the last week, we made significant progress increasing the readability of our document. By opting for less-technical word choice, reformatting our sections to include easy-to-read charts and tables, and including personal anecdotes, we hope to provide the sort of mix of facts and nuance offered by a knowledgeable mentor. We still have work to do reformatting the end of the document and including transitions to avoid making any assumptions that might confuse next year's team. Already, though, writing el gran papiazo has been a fun and useful exercise in technical communication (and creativity - checkout the life advice in the form of Haikus).