Engineering Major Builds Pretty Decent Shelf

Story by Catherine Larsen 

| Published Jan 17, 2012

Junior mechanical engineering student Grace Hopkins built a shelf Saturday afternoon, and was reportedly “very satisfied with it.”

Hopkins ordered the shelf’s parts from IKEA’s online catalogue eight days prior to reception.
“I left the box in my living room for a couple of days, because the assembly instructions were in Swedish and had these weird pictures,” she said. “But then I thought, what the hell, I’ve been studying engineering for three years, I can put this shelf together.”

But Hopkins soon found that assembling shelves is not as easy as it seems.

“There were so many parts,” Hopkins recalled. “How many parts does a shelf even need? I thought it would just be a few pieces of wood and some glue or something, and that I’d be able to use my natural engineering skill to stick it together. But it came with screws, and required tools! I don’t own any tools.”

The engineering major from Wisconsin eventually composed herself, however, and finished building the three-tiered pine shelf after six and a half hours of anguish.

“It turned out pretty well,” she said. “Now I feel good about the durability of my mechanical engineering education. There were only a few nails left at the end, so I’m confident the shelf will stay standing, at least for awhile.”