Strategy Captain For The First FRC Robotics Team

By the time I became a senior in high school, I was involved in a broad range of activities and I was a leader in almost all of them. I was captain my school’s math team, science bowl team, and science olympiad team. I was the programming lead and strategy captain for the FIRST FRC robotics team. I was the technology officer and a representative for my school’s student council. I preformed two independent research projects in high school under a mentor and performed well over 500 hours of service in largely self-driven volunteer work. All of this may seem like me just listing out my high school record. However, each one of these activities mean so much more to me then the time. They each represent different turns in my life and how I had to adapt

This taught one part of leadership: hard choices. There were choices that may not have made me the popular kid in the short run, but was fair when you considered the amount of work each one of these students would have to put into preparing for the competition. My school had traditionally done well, scoring first within the district and within the top three in the state. Another lesson I learned was charisma. During the six-week robotics build season, students are pushed to limits as they put almost all of their time outside of the classroom into the club. I was the strategy captain in addition to programming lead. This meant that I would put in all of that time during the build season along with my peers. But afterward, it was competition season, when my responsibilities truly increased. I was then the strategy captain, which meant that I had to run the scouting team through three long, often 10-hour weekends. They would often be tired and unwilling to perform tasks. I thus realized my second aspect of leadership: charisma. I needed to inspire those around me with charisma in order to inspire everyone to keep watching matches, ranking teams, and turning in scouting