A significant action of mine was when I was leading my VEX competition robot team and decided to scratch the build at the last minute. It seemed like a terrible idea, but we had no choice because we knew our robot was not ready for the competition and would fail to perform for sure.
In one of the classes I took in high school, one of our yearlong projects was to build a robot and participate I in a local VEX robotics competition. In the competition, our built robot would compete against another in an arena that involved rubber balls. The goal was to get as many rubber balls on the other side as possible in a certain time. From the beginning, our team had many issues including malfunctioning parts, computer glitches, and part shortages. These unexpected and even frustrating inconveniences caused an innumerable amount of delays. Regardless, a week before the competition, we had a somewhat functional robot that was ready to be tested. However, when we finally held our breaths and began testing it, it failed miserably. The arm was too heavy for the motors, our wheels were too small, and the robot was too heavy. With only a week left before the competition, we felt that we were doomed to be the only team from our school who would embarrass ourselves at the competition. …show more content…
Disagreement and indecision kicked in as the other teams in our class were ready to perform. As team leader, I knew I had to take some action or we were sure to embarrass ourselves. And that’s when I made a highly controversial decision of scrapping the whole build and changing the entire frame of the build. At first, my idea met with sharp criticism. Had our work the semester been a waste? What happens if we take it apart and cannot reassemble it fast enough for the competition? Nevertheless, I pressed on, and it became one of my most significant actions as a