The song I picked was kind of on purpose, to display the emotional rollercoater I’ve been through, that include the excitements and saddening times. VEX has been quite awesome for me, but at the same time it was rough.
Within VEX, competing as 1814D felt almost like my team was filled with extreme build quality, resources, and luck, but we always were cursed at the same time. “A curse and a blessing.” But, other than the worlds curse, I just want to say that I enjoyed VEX to the fullest extent. I was always excited to compete in competitions with a unique design, and I was lucky enough to be able to test new ideas that were competitive despite being different. But, there was always one issue while I competed in VEX; I felt stressed every single day, for 4 years, and became more emotionally drained as years went on. To me, being independant made me more competitive, but at the same time it felt like torture. I always ended up working on my robot and fine-tuning it to perfection, but once I go through and make that perfect robot I find myself only having 1-2 weeks left to practice, which is not enough considering that I also had homework to do as well. But, eventually, after 1-2 years I decided to go with one single cap bot for Turning Point. I did not care about autonomous, I did not care about anything else except making sure elimination rounds and driver control was set for me. I built a robot that dominates eliminations, but once competition become higher I realized that the caps became more and more unbalanced due to shooter-bot advancement. So, after figuring out that I got a worlds spot through online challenges, I built a ball bot. It was a risk for worlds, but it was a risk that I had to take because a cap bot wouldn’t do as good in the big leagues. The ball bot was built in two weeks. To many that’s a lot, and to some thats not much. But regardless, it was a fine-tuned machine I was proud to enter worlds with through the two week stress I was put through with sometimes no sleep at all. I lost first round of eliminations for my last year as Delta… again. This feeling of not being able to advance for 3 years in a row at worlds made me tired of competing in VEX. And, I hate to admit it, but I feel relieved to retire.
Although this is a year late, I just want to say to all those who supported me throughout my times: Thank You. Some of you believed I had potential to win worlds, and I’m sorry for bursting your bubble and not living up to the expectations you believed me to become. I guess my High School years were extreme attempts at living up to the expectations to hopefully make Round Robin, but sadly it did not happen, and I feel like I let those people down. But anyways, most of it was out of my control as I never really was involved with large organizations, basically as the David to all the other well-funded Goliaths out there. So, in the end, I don’t really have many regrets. As I said, I enjoyed VEX, and I am happy to retire.