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Farewell, FIRST

Posted by Anna on July 25, 2010

Forty-five days (unless I can't count), then I'll be a college student in a distant faraway mysteriously strange land of The East Coast. My days as a member of The Green Machine shall be officially over (well, they have been for a while, but... now it's more official). But don't cry! I'll come back and visit! I might even make a surprise blog post if I feel so inclined! Exciting, yes?

So yeah, I guess this is my last blog post as a pre-college student (unless something Really Awesome happens and I just have to babble about it). So... time to get sappy and melodramatic! And I'm not even dramatic by nature (unless it involves figure skating, but I'll stop there), so this is kind of a big deal for me. I hope you're all impressed.

Seriously though, I'm already missing FIRST. Normally around this time I'd be helping out training future programmers or volunteering for outreach or whatever the rest of the team is doing, and now I'm sitting here eating cupcakes and bemoaning. Sigh. I still have the team laptops, but soon those will be handed off to next year's programming leader, and then they'll be... gone... *sniff*

Doing robotics work would really be nice right now actually because it would distract me from the fact that OH MY GOLLY I'M GOING TO COLLEGE. This is distressing because:

1) College food isn't nearly as good as my mom's cooking, which means I'm going to end up eating a bunch of junk food and get fat. How the heck am I supposed to burn calories if I don't have robotics to force me to run the ridiculously long distance from the programming/CAD room to the workshop every five minutes?

2) I'm not going to get any sleep. Ever. Well, ok, I never got any sleep during the build season anyway, but still...

3) Purdy and Remy won't be there to give everyone sandwich hugs. Which are painful. But I'll miss them!

4) There are other reasons, but they currently elude me.

Well, fine, I can't lie, I'm actually really freaking excited for college. No parents! New friends! Crazy wild Respectable and legitimate parties! Oh, I suppose the whole academic thing might be mildly interesting. Eeehh... 

To be honest, I don't think I'd be half as prepared for college as I am now with four years of FIRST experience. Not just because of all the academic things I learned, but the real life skills I've picked up that Dean Kamen and all the speech-givers talk about and kids don't necessarily listen to because they want to hurry up and get the games going. Especially time management (oh goodness, the course-work I'm about to get. I shudder at the thought). And the social skills. Even though FIRST eats up lots of social time for some people, I think being on robotics helped me learn to actually talk to people and not just sit in a corner and do everything myself and wanting everyone else to stay out of my way. So to all Green Machine folks, thanks for helping me change from an awkward shy antisocial kid to a (still slightly awkward and shy, but less than before) responsible adult who's ready for the whirlwind that is college life (oh goodness, my apologies, that was cheesy). 

It's been a good four years with the Green Machine. If college is half as fun, I'm betting the next four years will be pretty darn exciting.

Anna