Fifth Place and Frugal

Yes, we did just get 5’th place in the MATE International ROV competition, beating out big fancy schools like Purdue and Ohio State, and we did it in style.

(By “style” I mean “multicolored LBCC t-shirts we hastily purchased from the bookstore minutes before we left, which resulted in people getting us confused with Long Beach City College.”)

As the mom of the trip, I can’t help but be insanely proud of my boys for how amazingly well they did.

You know how hard it is to get family photos, right? Someone is always either blinking or crying, and often you forget altogether. So, since we didn’t get a good family/team photo, I’ll have to leave you with a candid shot of us eating dinner.

Not only did we come in fifth, but we also won the “biggest bang for your buck” award, which is basically the “you cheap” award.

We did, after all, score 210 points with a bot that cost us $1500, compared to, say, Purdue, who spent $25,000 on a bot that scored them 25 points.

Our plaque featured a one dollar bill, and was placed sideways in its cheap plastic frame.

We made fun of it adequately.

But in the end, we were insanely proud of ourselves. Our heads visibly increased in mass.

(Cue geeky discussion about whether “getting a big head” constitutes an actual change in mass or not)

(All photos except the last one were taken by Nick Ruedig. Thanks Nick.)