Competition! (Day 1)

So, as I am part of our school's Robotics team, I also go to a lot of competitions for it. Today was day one of our biggest, most important competition, and it was...amazing. Just...amazing.

First of all, there was, of course, the competition itself. Of course, there was tons of stress, comparison, and robot fixing. That's part of competition; that's part of the reason I love it. I even love the hyperventilation of my team, especially the more...ah...competitive ones. I loved the whole driving and my team changing strategies to match things they found out last minute. I loved the whole stereotypical competition thing.

I also loved meeting people and comparing and talking about robots. We learned so much from simply looking at their designs. And then the teams that showed us EXACTLY how their robots worked? Oh man, I learned more from that than a week of just plain practice. I loved talking to some people from other schools and seeing what they were like, and the people that found us repeatedly, the people that I think that really are all good and nice...it was simply amazing. One of them in particular, a boy with the initials GO (no, I will not post his real name here), stuck out to me. He was a good, dedicated member of his team, and he found our team and was really nice. Of course, my teammates, being the people that they are, decided to say that we were flirting, but that's okay, since we weren't.

Another thing was how incredibly close the people on the team had grown, and our victories. We were more like a family that had together created something wonderful than just another team, just another competition. We have grown closer than I ever imagined possible just based on an educational competition of a few months. My video that I made for the Robotics competition, which I didn't think was all that good, made top six, and tomorrow, they will vote on it to see who the victor of the video competition is. And one of my teammates, who doesn't give out praise very often, told me that it was awesome. I am really proud of myself for that.

Of course, there were a few downsides, but that was part of the experience. Someone switched out our charger, and that was a bit of an issue. Of course, another downer was that we were in fifteenth place by the end of today, but we have sworn to bring it up tomorrow, since there are 75 more seeding rounds to go, and then semifinals, and then finals...

Let us see how it shall turn out tomorrow.