My co-teacher asked me, "Do you have a lot of students attending your robotics club meetings today?"
"No. I'm just hoping for some former robotics team members to arrive, so that they can show me what they used to do. Then I can build the program from there. Otherwise, I'd be stuck in 'Paralysis by Analysis,' and I'd never get the group going."
No one did show up for the meeting, but I found all the Vex robotic components after a half hour. Finding the manuals that I read about on the Vex website was my main objective anyway. I needed to understand the capabilities of these basic robots. The robots that I redesigned often were shuttling expensive silicon wafers to particulate-free semiconductor reactors. So they were very capable.
While watching videos of the competitions and reading the manuals, I realized what fun this was going to be for me. They want me to build this robotics program to be competitive with the San Jose and Albuquerque SIATechs, but I might not limit myself to that. I might eventually take my club to national competitions with regular high schools. Oh, how fun would that be to have the kids with absolutely nothing being noteworthy in a national competition? They could get collegiate scholarships!
My competitive tiger became poised to leap out of me. That's how I compete---leaping. I leap away from the competition, but not just away. I leap a whole new level ahead when I feel like it. My mind doesn't think like a normal person, so I'll just teach the kids to build robots that no one has built before with the Vex materials at hand. What fun!
P.S. To my blog readers: If you want to support a struggling math/engineering teacher and author, please buy my first book, "The Romance of Kilimanjaro," soon to be followed by my second book at: https://www.tatepublishing.com/bookstore/book.php?w=9781613464960 Thank You!
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