DRC Member Spotlight - Jake

“The Maker Space is a mess. Everything is on the tables and we have no room to work. We need to move the shelves with the supplies, because they take up all the work space on that table and it is really wobbly; one of the Seedlings could knock it over easily.” These observation came from Jake, this morning, a couple hours after I walked into the Maker Room and turned back around willing myself not to clean it all up.


Yes, Jake – the kid who invented the infamous Posibot and was considered for the Fallonventions Segment on the Tonight Show last year – otherwise known as the idea guy. His schemes are the soundtrack to our days; Jake (no exaggeration here) talks everything out - thinks out loud. He currently has three or (possibly) four (big) projects all at varying stages of completion right now. However, those were disregarded, again, today as he took on the larger venture of establishing a habitable, organized, and usable space to work.


Jake is one of those people who not only thinks outside the box, he doesn't even realize there is a box in the first place. He often sees the most obvious solutions when the rest of us seem to be working on a completely different problem, because he is so fully open to exploring all of the possibilities.


With that said, when it comes to his own work, Jake is also a perfectionist. He gets frustrated and discouraged when his creations don't turn out exactly as he had envisioned (maybe one of the reasons there a few unfinished pieces of art hanging around).


Jake's fascination with hands-on, creative projects --- from a variety of arts and crafts, photography, writing short stories, building “tiny houses,” to baking and decorating cupcakes informs and binds all the components of his individualized learning plan together. His phone is his research tool, camera, how to manual (for everything), calendar, entertainment, and recipe book, as well as communication device. A world of knowledge quite literally lives in his back pocket and he has the skills to access it all. Anything he can imagine is within reach in seconds.


One of the original three students from last September, Jake is an integral and vital member of the DRC community. He is our official welcomer, spokesperson, and event planner – it is pretty much guaranteed that no holiday will go by unnoticed, unplanned, or uncelebrated at DRC. His genuine warmth is a vibrant beacon that radiates compassion, pure silliness, as well as generosity, and, inspires us all to emulate his example.   

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