Robots are Cool

Recent conversations have been running something like this:

Me: So yeah, I joined the ROV club on campus…

Person: What’s the ROV club?

Me: Well, “ROV” stands for “remotely operated vehicle,” so it’s basically an underwater robot.

Person: Wait, you make robots?

Me: Well, um, not really. But I think they’re cool.

…

At the beginning of this year I suddenly panicked. “I’m graduating LBCC in a few months, and there are so many things I haven’t done!” I thought.

So I did all sorts of fun stuff. I joined the open source club, and write for the school newspaper, and joined the students for life club, and still worked part time and ushered for plays and concerts and did some things with the theater people.

The open source club kind of folded, but one day I was talking to Devon, one of the members.

“Yeah, we didn’t really do anything in the open source club,” he said. “The ROV club, however…we do lots of stuff in that club.”

I questioned him, and he spun a beautiful tale of a magical club where community college students build robots and end up competing against big schools like Purdue and MIT. It sounded awesome, but I never considered joining, because I know nothing about building robots, and also, it was only three weeks before the end of term.

Later I was reading a newspaper article about the club. “This club sounds so cool,” I mused out loud.

Jonas, another club member, overheard me. “You should join!” he said. “We need communications majors. A good portion of our points comes from our tech report, and poster, and speech.”

“Okay,” I said, and I joined the club.

…

Tomorrow we’re heading up to Seattle for the big ROV competition. I’m going along.

I will try my best to take pictures and post about the experience.

I am beyond excited. This robot is the coolest thing since…well, not since sliced bread, since robots are in general awesomer than sliced bread.

Whatever.

Goodnight, and hopefully the next time you hear from me I’ll be in Seattle.