SANJITA SRINATH

I participated in FIRST LEGO League for 2 years and now this is my third year in FIRST Tech Challenge. In my first year, I was in 8th grade and that was the only pre-COVID season I got to experience.

My first time using the power tools

The first time I met my future team, I was attending an open house available for prospective members of the team. We got to meet the others and eventually split into groups to learn more. The group I was in first got to tour the power tools and learn more about how we would be utilizing them. I was already fascinated by them.

During my first year of FIRST, we created 2 bots. The first one was created through an instruction guide and was a very “starter bot.” This is pictured to the left!

The second bot we built was more custom and we CADded that bot into Onshape to practice our CAD skills. While it wasn’t as custom as our bot today, which has over 100 custom parts, it was much more advanced than our first bot.

During the competition season of that year, we won the Judge’s award for showing excellence, but not fitting into any other award category. This was the equivalent of say an exemplary rookie award and we were overjoyed to receive it. We learned so much from other more experienced teams! But just a short while after finishing the competitive season that year, COVID-19 hit and we were forced into a virtual setting for our next season.

This first season was an extremely trying season for me however which you can read more about in a future post! Picture Day