Senior Moments Column: More Than Metal and Motors

Photo by Lenin Estrada

When I tell others around me I am preparing for one of the most competitive events I’ve ever taken part in, they immediately think I am referring to sports. What they never imagine is that instead of me trying to throw a ball, I help build a robot who does it for me, instead.

For the past four years of my high school career, I have been a part of my school’s robotics team, Mechanical Mettle. When I tell people I am a part of robotics, they assume one of two things: I am really smart, or I am really nerdy. While I like to think I am both, that’s not why I joined robotics.

Before I came into the club, the only tool I could name was a hammer and maybe a screwdriver, on a good day. I never had to use tools much, so I felt no urgency to learn how to use them. One day, though, in the middle of my freshman year, I heard my brother talk about his robotics club. He said how fun it was and how all you had to do was show up and you would learn the basics. After hearing this, I wanted to do just that.

COVID-19 shut down any chance of getting to participate in robotics that year, but when my sophomore year rolled around, I approached the club leader and signed up. To my surprise, I had to do more than just show up to be able to work on the robot. If I wanted to join the robotics club, I had to learn the name and function of every tool they used. I remember being terrified, because I had never even learned the difference between a Phillips and flathead screwdriver. I was not the only person in this boat, though, so the club leader made a study guide, which I pored over for the next week.

I passed the tools test and spent the next few weeks familiarizing myself with the club basics. And then, over the next three years, I completed three different functioning robots.

Each robot had to go head-to-head with other schools’ robots while completing tasks. The challenge for this year’s robot created by the robotics organization we compete under was to pick up circles and shoot them into different areas, as well as hang on a chain with other robots at the end. The challenge always has multiple aspects, so the robot must be built to fit the abilities of each task.

This has been a problem for our club the past few years, as we compete with schools who have nearly $100,000 budgets compared to our few thousand, if we are lucky. We always work with what we have, though, even placing seventh last year in our competition and making it to State. Our team had never made it this far before, but because we were able to work together and come up with an effective design, we were able to successfully compete with our robot.

Robotics has been an interesting experience for me, as I never saw myself as someone who would spend hours upon hours cutting, drilling and wiring a robot into existence. While I am definitely not the most tech-savvy still, I like to think learning how to do things myself and mastering new skills has allowed me to become a better thinker. I may not be a Thomas Edison or Nikola Tesla, but I do know challenging myself to think outside the box completely changed the way my thought processes work, as well as allowed me to realize sometimes the most unexpected things have the most impact on our lives.

Lilly Johnson is a senior at Charleston High School in Charleston, Mo. She has

group, jam to musicals and BTS, and paint during the late hours of the night.