Visiting Job at the Robotics Lab

Every year throughout high school, Job has delighted in his school's F.I.R.S.T. robotics team and their winter build season and spring competition.

His school's robotics team began his freshman year with only seven members (that's small for a F.I.R.S.T. team) and has moved from a home garage through a loaned unheated, unwatered, rodent-visited parking lot shed, to a roomy attached full-fledged robotics lab/shop with excellent storage rooms...right on campus! And the team is something like 30+ members this year. And Job served as co-captain this year too!

It has been a remarkable journey for him, one which we never could have envisioned while choosing a school for him back in sixth grade. We feel confident that God (awesomely) placed him in the exact right school for him because He knew Job's interests and intellect and abilities so much better than we did and laid the path for him to have opportunity to explore and grow in those areas. There was another school we had considered for Job, but the beauty of hindsight vision shows us clearly that Job's advancement in mathematics and robotics would not have occurred at that school...that he has been in the exact right educational environment for him to maximize his potential. I love God and how He loves us (not just us, per say, but how he loves people, and helps us faithfully even when we are often not aware we are being helped).

So, back to the robotics lab specifically. F.I.R.S.T. robotics teams spend exactly six weeks (from mid-January to late-February) building a robot of a specific size (limit) that can accomplish specific tasks to play a very specific game of competition. The teams must each design, build, program and test their robots, before shipping them to the regional competition site on a specified day. Each team has exactly the same amount of time to build, so during the build season, high school team members and mentors and coaches spend something like 30+ hours per week in the robotics shop working on their team bot...and this is in addition to the regular school day...and sports teams...and homework...and work...and everything else going on in the rest of the kids' lives. I am regularly amazed at how they do it, but for them it is mostly love of this "mind sport" and enjoyment of the camaraderie...and they live and breathe this stuff...and we rarely see them (and never in daylight) during the build season. But they are so enriched and fulfilled and we all celebrate the successful completion of the robot with them and just know they are engaged in such a worthwhile endeavor that has built life strength and enriched their characters, far beyond the nuts and bolts and wires and programming code.

And, the three-day regional competitions remind you of a combination of giant-pep-rally/high-school-sports-championship-game/large-arena-concert all rolled up together...HIGH energy...very LOUD...super EXCITING! I highly recommend attending one, or at least checking it out on line here http://www.usfirst.org/roboticsprograms/frc/default.aspx?id=966 ...amazingly interesting experience...and I guarantee not at all what you expect when you think of robotics!

So, I think I'm finished gushing about F.I.R.S.T. robotics and will move back to my original topic of visiting Job at the lab.

After my initial involvement in the charter year of the small fledgling robotics team start-up, I played a much-less hands-on role while Craig threw himself into mentoring and coaching the team. He is one of a core group of about six mentors who guide and mold the team through the intense build process and competitions. They are wonderful. Not to say that there is no friction...there is...and sometimes quite a bit of it...but respect and appreciation for each other (and learning how to function competently and collaboratively in a working engineering team environment) has always been the end result when the project is finished for the year, and the team banners and medals have been hung, and the kids get back to the full swing of their regular high school lives.

So, this year, Job's senior and last one (sniff, sniff...no, actually a full blown boo hoo) I had rarely (read hardly ever) stopped by to visit the lab, because I knew Craig was there so much of the time...and because I was herding the rest of the flock while he was. I loved hearing the nightly updates on how the build was going, challenges the team ran into with design and programming, and successful approaches that worked them through...and what the guys had for dinner each night thanks to a highly organized and majorly successful rotating parent dinner schedule (and I mean these kids ate some-kind-of GREAT every day!).

So, one day Job casually wondered why I hadn't been by the lab...and I realized I really hadn't been there...like hardly at all...and I thought about it and recognized that because the robotics team had become such a well-oiled-highly-functioning operation, I had subconsciously checked it off my list as not really needing my involvement. But...when my wonderful little boy (sorry Job...just can't help it...for the rest of your life too...might as well get used to it) asks his mother about visiting his robotics shop, well, you know I am there.

So, one fine day, in late February, after I picked up Johngideon from school, we headed over to the robotics lab to visit Job before the vast majority of his team was scheduled to arrive. It was a very nice visit and we were so impressed with how they had turned concept into reality...being not technically minded myself, that never ceases to amaze me...and had this functioning robot that could do the very specific tasks of this year's competition...picking up and placing inner tubes on hooks of varying heights and then deploying a mini-bot up a pole...all driven by a little video-game-controller-thing. These kids are just too bright.

Johngideon and I just didn't have enough time, so after we left the robotics shop to rush and grab Montgomery from her after-school choir practice, we also picked up Josiah and two of his friends and hustled back to the lab for another demonstration (complete with safety goggles). It was a great visit, and the littles and myself were very impressed with the robot and the lab and the team and the mentors and the power tools and the snacks...and most especially how wonderfully Job and the other team members there at the time welcomed the younger kids and showed them how things worked and caused them to think hmmmm, maybe me too someday.

It was just a great visit. F.I.R.S.T. Robotics is great. The Boys' Latin School of Maryland is great. Anne Kellerman (the school's awesome technology head) is great. Craig (and all of the other mentors and coaches and parents) are great. And of course...my baby Job...who has grown so much and contributed so much through this process...is just awesomely...wonderfully...amazingly...great!

[contented sigh].......................................................[contented sigh again]

I'll post more on their spring competition experiences when they're all said and done...if the blurry-eyed tears will allow.    :o)

Much Love. Take Care.