Before I started high school in a new country, my only real experiences with robotics included teaching myself to code using YouTube tutorials and modeling a rudimentary BB8 in Blender with an incredibly laggy computer.
Wandering into the robotics lab as a freshman, I had no clue that it would become my second home; a place where I made friends, lost friends, grew from losses, and celebrated victories. It wasn’t always a smooth ride, but it was definitely a memorable one. In this blog post, I will share some of my experiences for those who might be thinking about competing (spoiler: you should).
When I was starting out, the first obstacle before me was forming a team. This was difficult because it was frightening to interact with people I barely knew post-pandemic. I realized eventually, though, that I had to bite the bullet and reach out if I wanted to do robotics.
So, during the club’s first introductory meetings, I approached people and asked them which role they were interested in pursuing and what their schedules were like. Eventually, after a few polite rejections and a few “maybes,” I belonged to an actual competing team. That was the first step in learning to communicate and put myself out there.
Another major obstacle was the skill gap. I felt constantly behind because I’d never connected code into a device to see it work in a physical space, and there were certain things that my team (consisting solely of freshmen new to robotics) did not understand. It felt as though we should’ve somehow known how to build a functioning intake and code motors.
There were veterans in the club who were helpful, if only we’d approached them… but we were too scared to. Because we chose the hard and time-consuming method of figuring it out by ourselves, we had to forfeit our place at our first nationals because we still didn’t have a steady drivetrain.
Some of my teammates grew so demotivated they stopped attending, but those of us who remained finally cast our pride aside and asked for help.
Reflecting on the skill gap after two seasons and noticing younger students face the same problems I had as a freshman, I decided to demystify robotics for my club by joining the council and creating the resources that once would’ve benefited me.
I created a detailed build guide for the parts in our lab, including where to find them and what to use them for. I organized workshops and recorded walkthroughs on designing with Onshape and using C++ for those ready to transition out of block coding. Doing this taught me to lead and initiate the things I was passionate about.
Finally, there’s the thrill of the competition itself: the culmination of months of hard work and learning, and yes, it can be very stressful. It’s natural for arguments to break out during such high-pressure moments, but the true nature of a strong team is, above all, staying resilient and supportive through every frustration.
Some of my most cherished memories include laughing and singing “Don’t Stop Believin’” with my friends when we ranked last in a competition. Another time, we forgot our radio (without which the robot wouldn’t even drive), and the team that we were competing against lent one to us.
Those are my four seasons and four reasons. Now that I’m “retired” from VEX V5 and graduating, I feel that robotics has been at the core of my high school experience. It was absolutely worth the panic-fueled 3 a.m. nights, though I would strongly advise having a healthier sleep schedule.
