| Posted on: | 03/21/22 02:44:58 |
| Last edited: | 03/21/22 02:44:58 |
Yesterday - well, technically the day before yesterday a.k.a. antier in Spanish - me and some friends were sharing stories of how we got into Tecbot, the robotics team I am a member of. We were tired after a long day of working, testing the robot; building stuff; realizing that X or Y doesn’t work; trying to find x or y thing for this problem; then realizing again that it was there the whole time behind some backpacks or whatever.
Anyways, we got to this kid. His name is Velasco. He is in 2nd semester of high school. In other words, he’s a freshman. He tried to get into tecbot since middle school, in 9th grade. People referred him to X teacher. Teacher did not respond his emails. None. Nada. none at all. Maybe his institutional teacher account had some corporate spam email filters so maybe he never actually received it ! So he got tired and eventually got into the high school were the robotics team was.
But this was all during the pandemic so he barely got to be in the high school buildings.
He tried emailing him again. And again. He seemed busy. He did not respond. Yet Santiago figured out the name of the teacher, then ( somehow ) got his zoom handle and started to get into his meetings at random times.
Eventually he figured out at which times he had to give classes and at which times he actually gave Tecbot. The head coach, X, is more like the manager. He knows some things here and there, I think he’s an engineer but hasn’t practiced in a long time. He isn’t actually one of the mentors giving technical advice - well, sometimes he actually is. So Velasco eventually figured out who the mentors were - that’s what we call them - and started to take electrical courses. This includes from resistance, raw formulas to actual real wiring of the robot, soddering, managing batteries, cables, and a shit-load of other things.
For this Velasco, I admire you. I somewhat remember when I got into tecbot. But I don’t think it was this hard for me. I actually tried getting into tecbot at the same age as you did - when I was in 9th grade. But it wasn’t this hard. My best friend had a brother who was attending that high school and that robotics team. He was - at the time - the season driver ! So yeah, I was able to get in pretty easily. But I very much appreciate that you are now in the team.
You told us and made us realize that showing up and doing things is more important than being on a list. There was never and will never be any list. If you have enough dedication to go through all this and more, you can and will and are going to be able to do anything you want.
This post is for you,
Velasco.