PROGRAMMING SUCCESS

As the season begins, the robotics team swings into high gear to prepare for regionals starting in March. The team has been successful in previous years, however this year they’re coming back stronger than ever with senior Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Mei Gordon-Washington leading the team after being elected last April.

“Aside from leadership skills, I’ve really enjoyed the community that I found in the robotics team,” Gordon-Washington said. “I’ve had the opportunity to really grow into project management, communication, and conflict resolution skills. It’s been really beneficial to me.”

The team is participating in the FIRST robotics competition. In FIRST, the team is given a game in the beginning of January, and has six to seven weeks to build a robot to be able to play.

Within the robotics team, they are split up into five groups: marketing, creative, mechanical, design and software and they are assigned roles within their groups.

Senior creative leader Emma Liu is working on the engineering side, along with the crafty and artsy side of robotics.

Story by Arianna Waller

District-wide Robotics team prepares for the FIRST Robotics Competition in March

Liu is also working to prepare members for not only their assigned tasks, but other challenges that are thrown at them.

“Since I became the creative director, I’ve been really trying to get members to be cross trained so that [they] not only can do creative, graphic design things, but also know how to code the robot or work with marketing and presentations to sponsors,“ Liu said.

Another creative design member, senior Abby Coons has said that the robotics team has opened her up to a more creative and unique way of thinking.

“It’s made me a much more confident person,” Coons said. “I learned how to talk to people at a lot of the competitions last year, and I learned a lot about public speaking and relaying information.”

Coons, Gordon-Washington, and Liu encourage others to will consider joining Robotics.

“There are opportunities for communication, business, art and you don’t have to be a whiz at coding or know how to build a robot when you walk onto the team,” You’ll find what you enjoy, and I hope people give it a chance.”

Story by Phoebe Morris