At 9 pm on a Wednesday night, there sat before us the sharp angles of aluminum, tangled wires, and riveted Plexiglas.  The aroma of stale Little Caesar’s pizza around us, our hands on our heads, eyes red from lack of sleep, and all the result of a problem we could not fix.  To top it all off, it was the week before we had to wrap it in a plastic bag, prohibited from it until the competition.
Nights like these were typical during my years in high school robotics.  Our team, 3944, was a rag-tag group of about fifteen members, with three core mentors.  In robotics, students and mentors work together to design, program, and build in six weeks a functional robot that could compete at the state and—potentially—the world level.  The process of problem-solving can be laborious and frustrating.  One small fix could result in multiple unforeseeable problems in the future.  Like farmers faced with the chaos and unpredictability of the rains, the work seemed continuous, and we sometimes felt powerless regarding our robot’s problems.  However, even after I graduated from high school, I returned to mentor my high school team.
Why did I go back to work sometimes long, grueling hours with more failures than successes?  Because the hard work and long hours I put into robotics gave me skills that would not only help me in my engineering degree but also in life.  And sometimes the hours our team put into the robot paid off in the end, like a plentiful harvest.
I was one of a half dozen students who helped launch my school’s robotics team.  I decided to be part of this extracurricular activity because I wanted more experience with engineering, and it would look good on my résumé.  A common misconception with extracurricular activities is that they detract from students’ school work and negatively affect their GPA.  For me, however, not only did robotics not detract from my school work, it complemented my performance in school, providing a practical application for subjects like math and physics.
I assumed beforehand that we would struggle our first year, but did not expect the droughts of defeat and anguish that lay ahead.  Our inexperience was a great obstacle, as if we were equipped only with a hoe for plowing the vast fields of possible designs and prototypes.  Like farmers plowing and planting before the coming rains, robotics competitors must prepare for the new season in advance by training the new students, especially on the use of power tools and safety in the garage.  Then, the long six week season begins.  Teams from all across Arizona are herded into an auditorium where the game is revealed from a giant projector onto a white screen.  The game is a list of required tasks the robot must perform to earn points to win at the competition.  As the game is revealed, ideas are planted. Some might grow and become fruitful while others might wither and be cut down in the brainstorming process.  After analyzing and cutting down the weedy ideas, the remaining fruits of labor go through the prototyping phase.  Once these ideas are harvested, they are taken to be refined into the actual robot.
We made many mistakes in this period, from brainstorming and prototyping too long to not properly diagnosing the robot.  During one of our late nights, our robot faced a huge problem.  One of the robot tasks was to climb over a seesaw-like ramp with a slippery surface in the middle of the field.  We attempted several times to drive the robot over the ramp, but our robot kept veering to the left for no apparent reason.  After three nights of trying to fix the problem, we finally decided to put the robot on blocks to see if there was a problem with the wheels themselves.  One of the speed controllers had fried, causing one of the motors to malfunction.  From that point on, we would always place the robot on blocks if there was any problem with driving it.  This specific technical problem and many others we encountered during the two robotics years taught me how to analyze each technical problem and check for the obvious cause before other options.
After six strenuous weeks, we wrapped the robot in a plastic bag until the competition.  During this period between the six-week build season and the competition date, most teams wait, resting after the intense building season.  However, our team knew not the meaning of rest.  Instead, not only did we continue to toil with the work of our hands and minds, we decided to do the unthinkable that only a few teams do: build a duplicate robot for practicing.  The task seemed daunting.  It was our first year, for crying out loud!  But our head mentor decided the experience and practice of building a second robot would benefit us (he was right).
After we built the second robot and practiced for only a day or two, the competition day arrived.  We did not do well our first year, ranking 43rd out of 50 teams.  In addition, we were not chosen to go to the elimination rounds.  But we did not allow our losses and mistakes to bring us down.  We turned our mistakes into lessons learned, motivating us to do better next year.
The following year, we made it our goal to rank at least above 25th or better than fifty percent of the teams.  The game that year was shooting Frisbees into rectangular, elevated goals.  Just as an experienced farmer will work just as hard during the successive harvest, we too worked and toiled about the same as the previous year with about the same number of late nights, boxes of pizza, and just as much frustration.  We followed the tradition of building a second robot and practiced for a few days.  Then came the moment of truth.
Although our robot was working well in the tournament half of the competition, minor problems, one or two bad rounds, and sometimes being allied with bad teams caused us to be ranked quite low.  Before the elimination rounds, we were ranked even lower than the year before.  As part of the elimination rounds ceremony, each team had to send a representative so that if their team was asked to be part of a team’s alliance, the representative would go up and either accept or decline the alliance’s offer.  That task fell to me.  I stood in line waiting for the inevitable disappointment of not being chosen for the elimination rounds.
The selection process finally came to the first ranked team, who had to make their second choice.  As the top alliance representatives were about to announce their second choice, I jokingly said our team number, 3944.  Just as I did, the first ranked representative announced in full formality, “We would like to invite team 3944 to join our alliance”.
I remember every moment of that event: how I jumped forward and ran to them to say, just as formally, “Team 3944 graciously accepts”.  The drought of disappointment and despair had departed.  The storm had come at last to quench the soil’s thirst, to germinate the seeds of hope that longed for nurture.  Our alliance excelled in the elimination.  Our robot worked incredibly, flawlessly shooting the Frisbees into the goals.  At times, we even outscored our fellow alliance members.  In the end, we won the regional tournament and went to St. Louis for the world championship.
Ironically, we did not merely meet our goal of ranking above fifty percent of the competition.  Instead, we received a reward that far outweighed our expected goal.  After our alliance won the tournament, we asked our alliance members why they had chosen us.  They both said that based on the statistics of how well we did as an individual team, we were a diamond in the rough.
Through robotics, not only did I gain hands-on experience with engineering; I also learned how to face problems with an analytical eye and to turn mistakes into lessons.  Most importantly though, I learned that with hard work and determination, one can accomplish impressive things.