OMG!!! We're on the road going to St. Louis! Yesterday was our last meeting and we packed everything up, as we did final touches on triboards, and rehearsed judging questions. You wouldn't believe the relief it is to be able to say "everything's done and ready!". Today, everyone at school wished us good luck and we're finally hitting the road! Excitement is in the air! We can't wait to open our eyes and just have a blast! :)
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We are all super-duper excited to be competing in St. Louis NEXT WEEK! But, as with any deadline, there is a lot of stress happening too.
DAY 4 With four days left until we start our drive to St. Louis, we still have a lot to do. And although we are getting stuff done, some unexpected stuff has come up too. Namely, problems with not being able to move our motors to position our attachments between programs when we're running our master program. At our meeting today, Mikaela finished the new CAD model, Olivia finished an apprenticeship model, Mikaela and Olivia tested the heck out our missions, Selina and I tried to figure out our master program problems with help from our coach and the US FIRST forums, and we still didn't manage to fix our program problems. But, after the meeting ended, because Caught in a Brainstorm meets in my basement, I made an outreach triboard and an about the team triboard for our pit. Eventually, our coach (my mom) had found what might be a solution to our master program problem after a helpful phone call with Scott McDowell, the coach of former FTC team 4140 Fish in the Boat. And that is how I ended up coding with my mom at 10:00 this night. BUT, WE SOLVED OUR PROBLEM! YES! And we'll be ready to run time-trials tomorrow. This program problem was definitely a big setback. But out of it, we spent a lot of good time testing and running our missions. we all have our fingers crossed that we won't encounter any more big roadblocks before Worlds. ~ Anna Marie Mitchell 04/17/15 We are all super-duper excited to be competing in St. Louis THIS WEEK! But, as with any deadline, there is a lot of stress happening too.
DAY 2 Well, I tried to blog yesterday. oops. We've been going hard-core robots this last week (read as: hard-core nerd), in preparation for the world championship. In the last two days we have discovered problems, solved problems, discovered that our solutions didn’t solve our problems *cough cough, master program, cough cough,* made about four bazillion triboards, gone to Walmart for pit supplies more times than anyone would care to admit, rehearsed (kind of sort of), gone through mock judging (kind of sort of), rewritten our business plan, made giant foam numbers, made beautiful FIRST Ladies tiaras, wished Lauren were here to see this chaos, re CAD modeled our robot, and tested the living heck out of our code. But we're getting there. And now it is almost 9 o'clock, I am taking math MCA's tomorrow, and I still haven't quite remembered what geometric sequence is OR painted my Vladimir Putin picture yet (long story). But we're getting there, and we are very nearly ready (also kind of sort of). On a more cheery note, we will all sleep very well tonight. :) 04/19/15 ~Anna Marie Mitchell We are all super-duper excited to be competing in St. Louis NEXT WEEK! But, as with any deadline, there is a lot of stress happening too.
DAY 5 We've added on meetings on Tuesday and Wednesday of this week, and this will be our third day in a row of meeting. Mikaela is cranking out an updated CAD model of our updated robot, I am making updates to the website, Selina is making adjustments to the Master Program, Olivia is building fun apprenticeship models, Lauren is traveling to Boston with her family where her mom will run in the Boston Marathon, and everyone is working hard to get ready for competition. Because of a Friday and Saturday State Speech tournament being held at Lakeville North High School, the whole district has school off tomorrow. So we will continue our meeting streak, and meet tomorrow (Friday) afternoon. We're all looking forward to Worlds (our pit area is sandwiched between a team from Georgia, and a team from Bejing, China), and being able to talk to so many other kids from all over the world who like to build and program robots competitively, too. ~Anna Marie Mitchell 4/26/15 I am a girl. (I know, right. My super-short haircut makes it a tad confusing.) And I am a citizen of the 21st century. As a citizen the 21st Century, I have failed to see some of the things that are ingrained in 21st century culture. Things like advertising, and subliminal messages, and things that probably be off putting if you actually think about them. A lot of this has to do with media. As a 13 year old girl in the 21st century, I make advertising. I AM THE ALMIGHTY TARGET MARKET! Unfortunately, most of the advertising geared towards me is focused on telling me how much better I could be. I could be thinner, prettier, taller, have longer hair, have no pores, wear jewelry, and be born with giant anime eyes. And we, as girls of the 21st century, get these messages ALL THE TIME, even if we don't quite realize it. Think of all the magazines flaunting headlines like “Be Sexy Now!” or “Lose 37 Pounds every 37 Seconds!” or “Make Him Love You!” What I didn't, and most people don’t realize is that even though we walk by these messages every day and think “maybe losing that much weight that fast isn't healthy,” we aren’t invincible. (Sadly, science has not reached that point yet.) And whenever we see these messages, even though we may not realize it, they have an effect on us. They become too normal to be analyzed. These type of messages sell things because they tell girls “you're not quite good enough! We have something that can make you sooo much better! Buy it!” Sadly enough, a lot of people brush these messages off or buy into them because they're so normal. But they shouldn't be so normal. I am advertised to as if I should only care about my appearance and if boys like me. So that's a problem. That's why organizations like FIRST Ladies are crucial. In an age of airbrushing, it's nice to be told that I am a girl who happens to have short hair, doesn't look like media tells me I should, and isn't interested in “girl things,” and that's okay.
~ Anna Marie Mitchell 3/01/15 |
AuthorWe are FIRST LEGO League team #29, Caught in a Brainstorm from Lakeville, MN. ArchivesCategories |