My FLL Journey
Combining the excitement of sport with the rigors of science and technology. We call FIRST Robotics Competition the ultimate Sport for the Mind. High-school student participants call it “the hardest fun you’ll ever have.”
Under strict rules, limited time and resources, teams of students are challenged to raise funds, design a team “brand,” hone teamwork skills, and build and program industrial-size robots to play a difficult field game against like-minded competitors. It’s as close to real-world engineering as a student can get. Volunteer professional mentors lend their time and talents to guide each team. Each season ends with an exciting FIRST Championship. (https://www.firstinspires.org)
My fll journey started 5 years ago.I’ve participated in 3 different teams and had lots of fun during every day that we were together as a team. In these five years I’ve learned lots of things that helped me change for the better.
First lego league (fll) is a robotics competition for ages between 9 and 16 compete in three different aspects, forming one team’s project. The three parts are as follows: Robot, which is where teams create and program a robot designed to complete a series of tasks within a given amount of time. The second part is Project, which is where students research a problem within each “season’s” theme and create a solution. The final aspect is Core Values, which is created to encourage teams to maintain a cooperative and professional team.
When I first joined my team, I thought that the only thing I would do is the robot aspect of the team. You see, I began doing robotics in the second grade and that is all I knew about when it came to First Lego League. So I decided that I would do the robot and only the robot part. But my coach helped me a lot during my first year and thanks to him I had a good progress in both building robots and helping the team about the project.
Every year we got better and better at designing robots and coding them. In the project part we were creating solutions for different problems that our world or society is facing. And while doing some basic research about the issues may have been sufficient to get a decent idea on the issue and its solution’s validity, reaching out to experts on the topic provided us with an even better understanding of why our project worked, and where it needed some improvement.
Of course, getting information from experts is great! But once you’ve consolidated all of your research from your various sources, you end up being an expert as well which means that you have the chance to pay it forward. Soon after placing first in the state, we decided it was time to share our ideas with others; we gave presentations about our project at 9 different schools.
The best part about the fll was the idea of working and taking decisions as a team. Not only for getting a good place at the competitions but also I think it is an important value that can help you get better decisions in your daily life
I’ve learned lots of things during these 5 years and I want to say that it is important to make sure you have fun because it is so important that with any competition, you have fun with it. One of the most important things that anyone can learn is that no matter what you do, it will not seem like work if you’re having fun.
Signature AQUAMATIS Writer Atakan ULUOCAK
