Forbidden Things

A list of tools, materials, behaviors and methodologies not used in the EDS.

Forbidden Things

The list below has evolved over many years of work with undergraduate students on course projects, research, and competitions. The EDS encourages ways of working that should not require any of these things.

1. Duct Tape / Duck Tape
2. Hot Glue
3. Nails
4. Super Glue
5. Design Thinking
6. Constructive Solid Geometry
7. On-campus manufacturing
8. Closed-source, expensive software
9. Breadboards
10. USB Sticks
11. Producing Meaningless Proofs-of-concepts
12. Not thinking hard enough about what to work on and why
13. Showing up thinking you know everything
14. Waiting until Capstone for your time to shine
15. Thinking you can compete on price alone
16. Valuing "correct" answers over "good" answers
17. Leaving dirty dishes in a sink
18. Pretending to wash a dish, without using soap, and putting that dish back into circulation
19. Having Loud Conversations
20. Having Loud Conversations in a language people around you don't understand
21. Using the phrase "I don't know how to..."
22. Bargaining to receive full or partial credit for objectively bad work
23. Waiting to take a course before learning something
24. Worshipping humans with the title "professor"
25. Saying "I ran out of time" instead of "I didn't dedicate enough time"
26. Searching in the ocean for a child lost in the woods
27. Valuing academic research over industry research and development (in engineering)
28. Trying to compete, head-to-head, with industry while in academia
29. Thinking that semesters mean something to adults in the real world
30. Thinking that summer vacation is a normal thing for adults in the real world
31. Sprinting to be a unicorn with an glaringly obvious idea
32. Tool Training Sessions / SOPs
33. Getting paid to work in the EDS
34. "Borrowing" tools from EDS
35. Using COVID-era excuses and mindsets for not working hard enough
36. Thinking a presentation or pitch deck is the hard work
37. Weekly "check-in" meetings
38. Claiming to be working with someone remotely (even just across campus)
39. Blaming tools for your bad choices
40. Being busy for the sake of being busy
41. Mistaking a weekend project for a serious project just because you've let it baloon into a monster waste of time
42. Virtual Reality, blockchain, crypto, metaverse, NFT, etc.
43. Worshipping any one social media influencer
44. Asking time-wasting questions because you're socially anxious about silence
45. Thinking that the classroom is the source of knowledge
46. Thinking that the value of a University Education is the courses taken
47. Demanding that the leash stays on
48. Commuting home between NYUAD and Dubai / Abu Dhabi on evenings / weekends
49. Treating NYUAD like high school
50. Chasing trends you've read about in the news
51. Refusing to waste time on things you're passionate about