Have you ever heard of the Marshmallow Challenge? If not, please google it up! It's a challenge often used as a STEM team-building exercise where teams are given a handful of spaghetti (about 20 or so), some masking tape, scissors and one marshmallow. The challenge is to build the tallest tower possible with the marshmallow at the top of the tower. It makes for a fun game night with friends, too IMHO.

I bring this up because the story goes that 4th graders consistently beat rocket scientists and engineers at the challenge. While structured adult engineers want to devise the best possible structure, the kids are pure chaos and madness and through trial and error come up with some amazing designs.

If chaos works for you and gets you the results you want, go for it! In the following sections I will suggest some ways to organize your work, but by no means I intend to get in the way of creativity, tinkering and chaos. A lot of the technical things I learned, I did by trial and error, and in many instances the "magic smoke" escaped from the device I was working with; although frustrated at the time, I learned a ton and also had fun in the long term.

But, if you are not having fun, or are feeling frustrated, some of the tips coming up may help.