My Robotics Olympiad experience Part-1

Hi! I am Alex, and this is my robotics olympiad journey in a nutshell.

Summer 2019:

I joined two ev3 workshops in iCreate this summer. These workshops were in preparation for the iCreate Robotics Cup. Each workshop ended in a competition and I placed first and second in them. The last preliminary competition was 2 days before the Robotics Cup. I knew that the course will be the same and my mom and dad told me to fix my code. I didn’t. I felt that my robot was already strong and I kept on beating the other competitors. I got cocky.

Robotics Cup 2019:

The competition started. I had high hopes because for the last few runs everything went fine. There were a few bugs in the code, but I didn’t fix it because I thought it was going to be okay. This lead to my failure. The first 3 winners in our category will be representing the center during the Philippine Robotic Olympiad. I came in 4^th. I went home and stopped thinking about robotics for a while.

3 weeks later:

I went back to the center to try and prove that I was worth picking to join the next competition. When I got there, I was surprised to see that the person who got 3^rd place wasn’t there practicing. I asked the coach about him and he told me that the other student dropped out because he couldn’t make it to the trainings. They also told me that they were considering me as a replacement! I was pretty happy when I heard this that I totally forgot about the fact that I hadn’t eaten yet.

To be continued.

Lessons Learned:

1.     Don’t underestimate your opponent

2.     Don’t get too cocky. There is always room for mistakes and improvement.

3.     Put yourself in a position where when the opportunity presents itself, you can grab it.