Jim Correll, director Fab Lab ICC at Independence Community College, Independence Kansas 

We didn’t give out too many Fab Lab magic wands in 2020; maybe we should have. All of our youth programs were paused as were most group gatherings. We worked most of the year except the closure from mid-March through end-June and a week or two in September. We did serve quite a few members in 2020 and we made a few masks and face shields. As we move into 2021 with high hopes of pressing the play button on youth maker boot and STEM camps this summer, maybe this will be a good year for the magic wand. 

Magic Wands Arrived in 2017 

Magic wands were first delivered to the Fab Lab in the fall of 2017 and we’ve distributed hundreds of them to all the middle school and high school youth that came to visit, study at or make things at Fab Lab ICC. We’ve also handed some of them out to community college educators at conferences we attended before 2020. 

These magic wands can be used to make anyone’s dreams come true. The instructions to use are fairly simple. First, find a pencil sharpener—rare these days, but they do still exist. Second, sharpen the magic wand as if it were a pencil. Third, write down the dreams you wish to come true, sometimes again and again. Fourth, wait for the dreams to come true. Sometimes they will come true quickly, sometimes it may take a while. 

The Power of Thought is a Lost Art 

While this magic wand may look like a pencil, the magic of expressing the dreams on paper is related to the power of thought. The power of thought is a lost art that has never been discovered by many of us. Many of the youth coming to Fab Lab ICC are not aware of the power of thought. When we write down the dreams we want to come true and review those dreams every day, we begin to drive our daily actions toward the dreams and over time they come true. 

The power of thought is a timeless concept and it’s been available to mankind since the first cavepeople dreamed up the wheel. Somewhere, in some cave, there’s a hieroglyphic of the first wheel that served as someone’s written dream of an easier way to move things around. Since the power of thought is timeless, the magic wand doesn’t have to be computerized or require batteries. 

“Think and Grow Rich” Tells the Story 

In the early 20^th century, a young magazine writer named Napoleon Hill interviewed Andrew Carnegie, the industrialist and philanthropist. Carnegie challenged Hill to make a life’s work of studying various successful people of the time to see what made them successful. In the decades of work that followed, Hill discovered that everyone he studied used the power of thought to become successful. In his book “Think and Grow Rich” he shares many of these stories as well as a methodology to harness the power of thought. The first step; write it down. Although Hill doesn’t say anything about using a magic wand—that idea came from Mike Ewy a Coffeyville banker friend of mine—the magic wand concept helps demonstrate the power of thought and the written word to young people. 

In March of 2016, Fab Lab ICC manager, Tim Haynes and I put one of our dreams in writing; an open letter about how we would use $700,000 to expand the Fab Lab space. We broke ground on October 1, 2018. The building includes the Equity Bank Digital design studio where we keep most of the 3D printers and our wide media 2D printer. It includes a business incubator, a welding shop and paint booth. Many things Fab Lab are works in progress. The welding and paint booth have been a long time coming but should be finished up by spring 2021. 

Using the magic wand to express dreams on paper does work and we will be sharing these magic wands with everyone visiting Fab Lab ICC in 2021 and beyond. After 2020, we could all use the magic of writing things down. 

Jim Correll is the director of Fab Lab ICC at the Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship on the campus of Independence Community College. He can be reached at (620) 252-5349 or by email at jcorrell@indycc.edu. Archive columns and podcasts at www.fablabicc.org.