Competition! (Day 2)

As I said yesterday, today was day two of our Robotics competition, and it was the day. This was the day when the architectural engineering students came out and did their thing; this was when the media we got press and media coverage; this was when Student Council came out to cheer us on; this was when the teams gave their all out best. Of course, as yesterday, there were high points and low points, good things and bad things.

Since apparently I’m some special deity-like person (can you sense the sarcasm there?), I got to wake up at 6 am and get to the competition at 7:30, while the rest of the team got there at 8:30.  I ran around the campus (yes, the competition is held at a university) until about 8, trying to find a printer to print off some utter “bull crap” (as my teammates called it) about our team t-shirt. We finally did, and then we went back. I went down to the pit area, which is where the teams fix and are required to put their robots, and went around and did some—ah—interrogating of the higher scoring teams. They told us pretty much their whole strategy and how they came up with the design, and everything. Absolutely everything. But it was awesome, and their dragon design on their wheels was awesome too.

Since only a certain number of people (five people max per team) are allowed down in the pit at one time, I had to go trade out with another one of my teammates, which resulted in me sitting in the stands for about an hour. Did I mention this was in a basketball arena? Yeah. Well, our team was one of the first eight competing, and so, I had to watch our team from the stands, which I absolutely HATED doing, because I couldn’t see ANY of the strategy involved.

After a while (aka 14 rounds later), one of my teammates swapped out with me, and I went down to perfect our strategy. You know the drill, which teammate was going to take out what based on their skill and their competition, yadda yadda, et cetera, et cetera. We sat around for a while, waiting, just waiting for our team’s turn to compete. When it finally did…it was disastrous. Absolutely disastrous. One of our “good” drivers (yes, you have to remotely drive the robot) only scored a couple of points (and by a couple, I mean 120, which really isn’t a lot). Then another one of our “good” drivers didn’t score at all. And then… it was Yay Cop. Our best driver. And he, too, only got 120 points.

Then I drove. Best. Driving. Ever. Three flies. Opened the cabinet door. And then…EXTRA TIME. Oh my God. I had EXTRA TIME. That…is…unimaginable for our team. Yeah, the others kinda failed. But it’s all right. We’re proud of ourselves. My video was good. Our t-shirt design wasn’t terrible. It was a great day.

We ended up getting twenty something, I’m not sure, out of about fifty teams. But since this is our first year, hey, I’m proud. And of course, Ory (I am forced to do this) was a big help. Thank you, Ory. (Yes, I remembered your name. If you remember me, I'm the Asian girl with the puffy hair in the dark blue shirt who you talked to somewhat. The one that bothered you about that Lindsay Lan School.)