We were designing a wheelchair for a college engineering course. While my classmates were certain that we needed to use steel and felt only steel would be strong enough, I thought steel would be too heavy and aluminum（铝）would be a better option. But the student who strongly argued for steel worked at a bike shop. A few days later, when the big and heavy steel arm kept dropping down, I wished I had shown more determination to defend my position.
I was a crafty kid. Not crafty like a fox, but crafty to the point that my parents would come home ready for whatever "artistic" explosion I had made that day—painting, clay sculpting clothes, and more. But when I studied engineering in college, these pursuits were deep-sixed. Not only was I stretched for time, but I didn't think they were relevant to my academic work. I hesitated to highlight my female crafting interests in the male-dominated engineering environment where I already felt like an outsider.
When I went on to pursue a Ph. D. early in the pandemic, I felt anxious and turned to crafting. One day I was making a set of dice as a gift for a friend. While putting the liquid resin（树脂）into the silicone mold（硅胶模具）, I made a joke to my partner that I was "injection molding"—a standard engineering manufacturing（制造）process. I suddenly realized that although resin art is not injection molding in the technical sense, it shares the spirit and probably some skills.
Soon I saw more connections between engineering and crafting that I had previously ignored. And crafting taught me not to give up when my product didn't match my initial vision and to consider the failed creation a learning experience, just as an engineer must.
Since then, I‘ve built crafting back into my free time. I mentioned my dice- making experience at a robotics conference and explained in a team meeting how we could gain inspiration from art experiences. I was glad that the responses were positive—not rude or unfriendly, as I used to fear.
