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Have you ever felt so uncomfortable about the idea of having to do something, you just wanted to quit? Bray Jamieson can relate. Back last fall, Jamieson was one of a handful of students who got that put a senior-level engineering and a communications capstone class together for their collaborative final project: Build something un-useless.

ā€œThis was one of the most influential and frustrating classes I have ever had to take in my life,ā€ says Jamieson. ā€œWe spend so much time grounded in theory, we donā€™t get the chance to engage in theoretical experiential learning, especially making things ourselves and building with our hands. It broke the mould.ā€

And it was incredibly uncomfortable.

ā€œThe most challenging part was that as communications majors, we hadnā€™t learned how to communicate. We spent our whole degree looking at theories, but when it came time to have a direct conversation with someone in another discipline, there was a communications barrier between us and the engineering students.ā€

From Okotoks, Jamieson began at ¶¶ŅõAPPµ¼ŗ½ in 2014. He took a break in his studies and came back in 2020 to finish his program, which heā€™ll do Nov. 16, 2023, when he convocates. ā€œThe last two years of my program, when I came back as an older student, I had more of a determined research ambition that I didnā€™t really have as a younger student.ā€

Discomfort turns to inspiration

As a communications and philosophy major, he focused on communications theory. His work explored rhetoric and the intersections in political communications, specifically Canadian.

ā€œCommunications students are required to take a capstone seminar that is usually a standard research paper project.ā€

Dr. Maria Guglietti, PhD, an assistant professor in the Faculty of Arts and Dr. Marjan Eggermont, PhD, a professor (teaching) in Schulich School of Engineering, had other ideas by bringing very different students together.

And what surprised him was the thing that initially scared him.

ā€œI really enjoyed the opportunity to build something, as silly as that sounds,ā€ he says. ā€œIt opened my eyes to a human element I am missing. It was refreshing to do something so practical.ā€

Jamiesonā€™s group chose to lean into the interests of their engineering colleagues ā€” also a fruitful strategy to engage the entire team ā€” and created an impossible-to-lose golf ball, called The Reel Golf Ball.

Experiential, transdisciplinary opportunities like the one offered in Eggermont and Gugliettiā€™s course are important for students to have space to try new things ā€” especially since collaboration and shared analysis can be a catalyst to finding solutions to societyā€™s big questions.

ā€œWe donā€™t get forced into discomfort too often. The ³¦³ó¾±²Ō»åō²µ³Ü werenā€™t meant to work and when our design didnā€™t function, no one cared. We didnā€™t fail ā€” there was this opportunity to gracefully fail and explore what that feels like and move on. It doesnā€™t ruin your academic career.ā€

Jamieson isnā€™t going to become a full-time inventor, but he is taking the applied theory from the course into his future. He decided to go back to school, but this time chose a new field: law.

ā€œI want to be doing something pragmatically beneficial for myself and for others. The specifics of what that looks like ā€” I donā€™t have an answer. Thatā€™s why I chose law. I decided to leave theory and try and explore something that can be pragmatic.ā€