They must learn to meet me half way

Ah the sleepness nights. I'd like to get a few floating thoughts off my mind before attempting to fall asleep once again.

I was watching a show on TV yesterday about four US olympic hopefuls in figure-skating and one of the coaches said "She must meet me halfway." For some reason, this resonated with me deeply and here is why:

US FIRST is like no other competition I know of. In the past three weeks, I have wavered between pleasant optimism and moments of sheer terror. Castilleja students are very very optimistic and entrepreneurial, but they do not know what they do not know. When they set for themselves the goal of building a laucher that they could shoot with through the middle goal and getting the vision camera working for autonomous, I hesitated and I stressed to them how difficult it would be. Frankly, it would take a Stanford graduate student in robotics a few weeks to figure it out (and I know that by experience). But since they rallied for it and believed in it, there was enough momentum that I could and would believe in it too. The case is the same with the trip to Portland.

If I had one wish for Castilleja Robotics, it would be for all the students, parents, teachers and mentors involved to realize that this is NOT a six-week effort. This is a year-round effort. My biggest regret coming into this second year is not pushing myself and pushing the students to spend time during the off season, particularly the fall, preparing for this adventure. I believe in learning by doing, and I believe in just in time learning, but there is JUST TOO MUCH to learn in robotics to do it just in time. Whether that is learning how to build part files in CAD, or program in C, or simply solder components and wires, I would hope that in future years, that the students invest at least some time before the season getting comfortable with these skills.

It is impossible for myself and the mentors to teach these skills *AND* help them solve a very difficult problem in just six weeks. Most college classes in this subject will spend five weeks alone preparing students step by step to build an integrated system - teaching modules in programming, in electronics and in mechanics separately first. Then the last five weeks are devoted to a project. Now try to cram everything into six weeks without any foundation. That's what's happening here at Castilleja.

It is incredibly frustrating for me to have to constantly tell these students what they should do next, especially in less intuitive areas like programming. If we spent more time together during the off season, they would start to be able to anticipate what to do next. For example, I would not have to sit down and show each and every one of them how to solder in order to get a little bit of wiring done, but I would be able to ask them to make headway without having to give them so much direction every single time.

On a similar note, the mentors themselves must spend time doing our homework. While we all have very broad and general knowledge in our respective areas, it is not until we dive into the code and into the kit of parts and understand what the students have been given will we be more effective in our roles. When a student comes to me and says 'My code won't compile', I could probably rattle off many many different reasons that are all wrong and too general to be useful. Without actually getting our heads around what they are given from US FIRST, we cannot effectively help them pinpoint obstacles. Castilleja Robotics has become my second job - I spend half my time at Castilleja with the girls and the other half the time blogging, looking up spec sheets, purchasing items, writing sample code to demonstrate basic principles, and drawing up CAD files for basic test platforms to support the design effort. I have many mentors who come through who want to help give strategic and high level advice, which is fantastic, but without students who have skills to execute on that advice, we will not move forward. I would love to be that kind of mentor too, but right now, the girls do not have the skill set to completely execute this on their own.

There are days when I want to just let them fall hard, but I realize that that might be suicide for an all-girls robotics team. I've had too many female friends drop out of science and engineering because they feel that they can't keep up. More importantly, I do not want this team to fail miserably in front of a male dominate crowd and prove, once again, the stereotype that 'girls can't do science or engineering' to others in the engineering community. This could very well be devasting to the students on the robotics team as it was when I almost failed an electrical engineering class where I was one of two women in a group of sixty.

As we build a foundation for women and technology at Castilleja through robotics, I hope that we can raise the level of commitment from the students to learn year round. It will help them work more effectively during the six-week blitz and it will empower them to make more design decisions. Most importantly, instead of this being 70% me and 30% them, I will be able to meet them half way, and one day, have them lead me.

Apparently I am a . . .

'Hot nerd' according to Chrissy.

It's been a tough week with 25 days left as of today, but I feel that we are racing towards the finish line a lot quicker now. We finally have most of the parts we need to finish building the six wheel chassis, which is fantastic. Bud spent a few hours this morning machining a great platform to mount all the electronics on so that we don't have to lift up ten separate pieces all connected with wires when we want to move a little bit. Chrissy and Julia are working to connect all the power circuitry and microprocessor elements with proper wiring and lugs. There's now a simple camera platform for us to work off us and things are picking up! I can feel it! We're getting there!

One thing that always impresses me is the dedication of the parents. Tonight, on a Friday night at 8 pm, we had Beth Schnurle (Kersten's mom), Debbie Hara (Julia's mom), and Emily's father with us. Not only did they feed us, they also brought lots of food. We wouldn't be here without them. It's so fantastic!

More later. I have high hopes for Castilleja Robotics as a sustained technology program!

Donut talk

This is Bud DeLisle. He is a master model maker at IDEO Palo Alto. He brings fantastic donuts and fantastic ideas to the Castilleja Team. He is also very adept at using donuts to explain his ideas. Many more great donuts moments to come!

Mentoring thinkers and leaders

As much as mentors like myself laugh about having the chance to play with cool toys in the kit of parts, and keep our skills up to par in areas that we might not practice in our professions, mentoring is very much a challenge of passing on knowledge and inspiring young women.

Castilleja robotics is a very special team of bright young women, who have conviction. With the crazy rush of a college prep high school, this is, first and foremost, why I don’t give up when it gets really hard. And trust me - sometimes it gets really hard with this team. It is an incredibly special thing for a teenager to have that much passion and conviction for something other than drugs, sex and rock and roll these days.

Gatorbotics was born out of the thinking the team would be, as much as possible, a student-run team. I entirely support that. I believe in ‘women leading, women learning’. But the difficulty therein comes when the students themselves aren’t aware of what they don’t know. Designing, engineering and building a robot is not as simple as getting together and making brownies. There are a lot of skills required in the process that aren’t part of every day life, that a young woman would not necessarily learn at school or in the household. That’s why we introduce robotics; exactly because the things the students learn in this experience are NOT commonplace. My frustration comes often when students want to make Baked Alaska and they don’t realize that they need a costly deep freezer and a blow torch to do it. And even tougher, because there is such a strong spirit of the team being student-run, the students may not ask for feedback, and I sometimes hesitate to suggest the alternatives or point out the failings, because I do not want to lessen their enthusiasm.

In my short quarter century existence on this earth, I have realized that leaders are good followers as well. I mentor these young women, but I myself have mentors who I check in for advice regularly. Great leaders are capable of doing, but also listening, and seeing the big picture of what is going on. Great leaders are also, more importantly, able to make each and every member of their team feel proud of their contributions – which begins by learning how to delegate, which is, more importantly, preceded by knowing what needs to be done. How to teach this skill I do not know, except by example and with encouragement.

Confucius said: "It is better to light one candle than to curse the darkness." It is painstaking to light these candles one by one, but only with loving care and time will it happen. There are no limits and helping these young women break those often self-perceived boundaries is really important to me. When a young woman realizes that she CAN do something and goes beyond what we expect, it is incredibly fulfilling to me. That’s what will make me go back every single time.

A lot of this has been on my mind and now I can go back to work.

Writing from a place where PWM stands better for Pretty Wild Magic,

Emily

Day 4 Highlights

42 days to go. That's right! We had a fantastic showing of big person supporters today. Doug B came by with a belated Christmas present for the build team - the biggest tool set you ever did see. Chris C came by to do some ass-kicking brainstorm and prototyping which resulted in a scaled down version of a spinning launching device (talk about rapid prototyping and seeing is believing!). Lilly jazzed with the webteam, and finally David B came with a fantabulous dinner. I am amazed. David has fed me well every single time I've been at Castilleja, and I'm there a LOT. Jon and Sara both pitched in on many fronts as well.

I have an uneasiness in my stomach about implementing the vision system but what better than to be challenged? What compounds this really is that we have NO WHERE in the school where we can put a 11 foot center goal. Dang it - why does it have to be so tall and unmanageable this year?

Nevertheless, I am continuously amazed at the support from friends and parents of Gatorbotics. I'm sure we will succeed this year!

Building Field Elements

Dearest parents, teachers and mentors,

Here is my initial call for help! I am looking for a teacher who can drive a school van, or a parent or mentor who has access to an SUV or truck so that we can go to Home Depot this coming Thursday, January 12 and pick up the materials that we need to build the field elements of the game.

The materials that we need are here:
http://www2.usfirst.org/2006comp/AdvanceBuy_2006_r4.pdf

PLEASE CONTACT ME IF YOU ARE INTERESTED AND ABLE TO HELP! I will pare down the list a bit - there are certainly game elements we can do without so PLEASE DON'T BUY ANYTHING BEFORE YOU LET US KNOW!

We are hoping to start construction at the IDEO Shop (744 High Street, Palo Alto) on Thursday, January 12 from 5- 8 pm and finish at Castilleja on Saturday, January 14.

Thanks in advance for your help!

Emily

ROBOT Magazine on Gatorbotics

I finally got myself to Borders to purchase a copy of the premier edition of 'Robot Magazine'. A while back, the team had a chance to interview with them and now it's on the shelf! We had a copy of it posted on the door of the science project room, but now you can read it for yourself at leisure! Bravo gatorbotics! (You should be able to click on the image to the right and access a larger scan of the article that you can read.)

Here's a link to Robot Magazine: http://www.botmag.com/

Why I do robotics . . .

Woodie Flowers summed it up very well for me this morning as to why I mentor robotics at Castilleja . . .

I want you to learn to learn the hard stuff.
I want you to learn how to work in a team.
I want you to learn how to have faith in your creativity.
And I want you to be proud of your work.

You will learn the most when the time is too short, when your budget is too small and when your team is too large. This is what the real world is like.

. . . So it's cheesy, but that's the truth. Gatorbotics, you are a very very special group of people in my heart and you will do what I could not do when I was your age. Being a woman in science and engineering can be really tough. This is why I want you to do everything I can to help you learn that you can succeed.

Emily

Aiming High

Super Troopers Jon, Sophia, Kersten, and Chrissy were in the science project room today for the 6 *AM* automatic light turn off. That's some serious commitment. So starts the six week FIRST Robotics Competition. We all met up today in San Jose State University for the 7AM kickoff and came back to Castilleja with a huge kit of parts (KOP) worth well over $10,000 given to each team. FIRST is amazing for what it is able to put together for high school students - enough to make engineers like myself droool.

This year's challenge is 'AIM HIGH'. Apparently the clue about the 'shovel's show' is a reference to David Spade's appearance in "Just Shoot Me". A very interesting complex challenge involving a finite number of foam balls, six robots on a field and scoring through a hoop. There are four periods: autonomous, defense, offense, then open. I'm not even going to try to explain the scoring details.

For a short 3 minute animation of what the game entails, go here: http://robotics.nasa.gov/events/first/AimHigh-Sml.mov

For more details on the robot requirements, game and arena details, go here:
http://www.usfirst.org/robotics/2006/frcdocs.htm

Some highlights of the day:

* When Jim Beck (FIRST Regional Director) pointed Gatorbotics out in the premier edition of Robot magazine at the kickoff.

* When we learned that pushing the cart quickly can result in a kit of parts in a puddle.

* When we learned from team 115 that the KOP provide us with a structural member with an offset center hole already in place for a six-wheel robot configuration.

* When Sophia kicked off the season in the Chorale Room to 30 students, parents and mentors. Oh the excitement. So much brainstorming and ideas that needed to be unleashed!!

* When we did our inventory on the KOP and found all sorts of wonderful sensors and actuators and goodies.

* When we finally left Castilleja at 4:00 pm, after a very long day for a few of us!

Kudos to the the subleads, the lifeblood of the team, for getting to Castilleja in the morning to all come together and for a very successful afternoon kickoff and brainstorm. As well, thank you to all the parents and teachers for supporting this effort. We cannot do this without you.

Egg Hatching

With the many emails I send to the Gatorbotics circle of friends, a blog was inevitable. Perhaps, I've even been a bit of a laggard! We've been gearing up for months now to the kickoff which is eight hours away - and with that, I am an insomniac and will count robots jumping over fences as I fall asleep tonight.

www.usfirst.org has posted this:

five 'bots tangling with pasta
a game piece obsessed with a shovel's show
and seeing Montana's green heights

See you all tomorrow in San Jose for the Silicon Valley FRC kickoff!