This blog post is going to waver a bit from my theme of balancing the different aspects of my life and focus on my largest time-suck right now: robotics. Robotics is incredibly relevant to my ideal  egingeering/math/compsci career because it is a microcosm of a STEM business.

There is a product that needs to be built, an end result. This project has a timeline, one final date by which it must be finished. There is a set budget, and a bill of materials must be kept. There are subdivided teams that must be managed, and each subdivided team has deadlines that match up to meet the master deadline. There are people in charge working on management, and a somewhat hierarchical structure. Westmont's robotics team, and nearly all successful robotics teams, are run similarly to a business.

Now, given the current curriculum  it seems fitting to evaluate whether Apollo robotics #3482, Westmont's robotics team, is a new rules or six sigma business. Given that I write part or most of the rhetoric that is put out about our time, I'll skip the boring quote analysis and go straight in to my conclusion. Apollo robotics is a new rules business because, although there is a finished product that can be easily rated, the goal of robotics is not to create a perfect robot. The goal, the mission statement that hasn't quite been written yet, is to promote STEM education in a fun and innovative way, and give all of the students of Westmont a chance to try out STEM fields in an actual application. We are not expecting to create a perfect robot, we are just trying to make a robot that we can be proud of. Passion is key, not perfection.

And it is that passion that has kept me in robotics although I have so many other thing that I would like to work on. I have grown incredibly attached to the team, and am looking forward to making it even stronger in the future. Hopefully though, it won't take up so much of my life after the season is over.