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After completing the project, The Real World: Pretending with LEGO, let me talk about my own experiences with LEGO.

This requires me to think back to the year... 1992.

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Long long ago, in 1992, the hottest toys on the market were:

I remember them well. At some point during my childhood, I did have a Hot Wheels Jeep Wrangler that I maneuvered around the backyard, a cute kitchen set where I would cook my plastic omelettes, another fun car that used feet power instead of battery power, a bald doll (not much to say there), and a piano that made xylophone sounds.

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But no matter how neat, cool, or expensive those toys were, the toy I spent the most time playing with, (you guessed it), was LEGO.

To be even more specific, I was a big fan of the LEGO line of DUPLO bricks.

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So what was so great about LEGO?

The good things were:

• I wasn't limited in what I could do with the bricks, unlike the toys above which only served a few functions
• I had the power to create whatever I wanted
• I had the choice to use different colors, different sized bricks, and piece them in any combination
• I could build a house one second, and take it apart and build a robot next

The bad things were:

• Cleaning up was hard (but did I always clean up? Of course I did....)
• It hurts to step on the bricks
• Sometimes, it's frustrating when you are trying to make everything one color and you run out of a certain color of bricks

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As you can see, my good experiences outweighed my negative experiences with LEGO, and that was why LEGO was such an amazing toy in my mind.

And today, I haven't changed my mind. LEGO rocks!

Playing with LEGO, in many ways, has contributed to the creativity that burns within me. Whether it is finding an interesting topic to write a paper on for my PWR class, composing a percussion ensemble piece that utilizes xylophone, tambourine, triangle, wine glasses, a red rubber ball, and bamboo flute for a music theory class, designing a research experiment in my introductory psychology class, or exploring the transformation of LEGO forms in this project for Michael Shanks' class, I can definitely look back on my experience with LEGO as something that has shaped me.

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I would like to thank Diana Law and Janan Barge, for being such great people and amazing group members. I really enjoyed working with you guys this quarter. I would also like to thank the STS 112 TA's for giving us feedback on our project proposals, and last but not least, I would like to thank Dr. Michael Shanks, He's even on Wikipedia!, whose intriguing lectures inspired me to look at the world in new ways.

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If you've made it this far, I also thank YOU for your time here, and I hope you have enjoyed The Real World: Pretending with LEGO.

Yours truly,

Doreen Hoang, Class of 2009, Economics

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