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.