SOL # 4 - Post Robotics Stress Disorder

Had a robotics competition yesterday, we ended up at 5th place, our best rank was 2nd.

I've been doing robotics for the past 3 years, I've had so much fun, sadness, and many other emotions due to joining robotics. I've made so many friends and have made so many memorable experiences through it.

For our last competition, I decided to do something that I haven't done. completely rebuild the robot on the day/right before the day of the final tournament.

I built a dr4b on it, it worked well, which suprised me since I read on the official forum for VEX (company running the robotics league I was in) that DR4B's were very, very difficult to build. They weren't wrong, It was very hard to build. It took about 10 hours of nonstop work to build it, from 5 pm on friday to 3 am on saturday (the DAY OF THE COMPETITION).

On Saturday, I woke up at the ungodly hour of 5 am in order for me and my dad to bring the robot and all the other supplies to the car. We made our way to Dunkin Donuts to get breakfast, I got the double sausage egg thingy on a croissant and a hazelnut macchiato, tasted pretty good.

I was hyped as heck for the competition. The results from our past competitions were cumulative, so we were automatically placed in 3rd behind team kryptonite and iron dragons, which I found weird since we got 1st and 2nd place respectively at our last competitions, huh.

We played Our games, winning 6 and losing 2 of them. One due to batteries dying (I broke down during this), and us being blocked by a team from our own school for the entire match.

Also, we somehow won the innovation award without a design notebook.

We dropped to 5th place, we got 5th seed but got moved up to 4th for the elimination rounds, we matched up with two alliance partners who also got ditched.

We won quarter finals easily, but we lost both of our semi final matches due to our battery falling off. I won every match I played in that season, I was very upset at not being able to play in our second semi finals match to pull in a win.

I was also very upset since one of my teammates INSISTED that they drive the robot that I dedicated the most time to, when I already had a good driving reputation (they lost).

I watched our second match, as our alliance fell apart. We lost 30-56, ugh.

I literally broke down weeping in the pit. A flood of emotions that rushed in caused that, I was angry at losing, sad that the robotics season was over, and happy that I joined robotics in the first place.

I cried for a solid 30 minutes, people tried to comfort me, but It was better for me to let go of this and cry it out.


Some pictures from the day of the competition: