This year’s game challenge, FIRST Steamworks, is multifaceted, challenging
, and fun. It’s an amazing way to end my senior year. Before the build season began, our team participated in multiple bonding activities. An annual event, 341 Night, was filled with team building activities, great food, and perhaps most importantly,tons of fun. I then organized a bowling night for the students, where we spent an evening at the lanes making fun of each other’s form and relaxing before the stress of the build season. Dariya, the build sub-team leader, even organized a Secret Santa event the night of kickoff! After all of these events, I’m glad to say that our team dynamic is more friendly and collaborative than ever.
Before I was the team captain, I served as the strategy sub-team leader in 2016. The intricacies of the FIRST StrongholdSM game challenged the entire team to think out of the box and create a winning, unique strategy, and I believe that we have surpassed the success of our 2016 game strategy subteam, which was new to our team last year. We’ve spent hours discussing, laughing, arguing (sometimes yelling) about what we should do this year, and I am proud to see my peers work so intensely at giving us the best possible chance in Steamworks.
The robot itself is, of course, a work in progress. At week four of the build 
season, we’re seeing the fledgling ideas of the days of brainstorming come to feasible fruition in final products. The final production phase of many prototypes are well underway, ahead of schedule. The drive base has been assembled and, for the first time in Miss Daisy history, we actually designed cutouts and spacing for electrical components (I know, it’s been a long time coming). Thus begins the lovely part of the season where the beautiful flexibility of wood and pvc turns into an elegant, aluminum-clad competition bot.
As for other groups on the team, our media and PR teams are going stronger than ever. Our Dean’s List nominees this year are Stephanie and Josh, two incredibly deserving people that I am certain will represent us well in the interviews at the competition. Good luck you two!! As for media, the members have been dedicated to their project groups, following individual subsystem groups throughout the season. Furthermore, the Humans of 341 project on Instagram is going quite well, and our Daisy Diaries series on YouTube has taken off. They’re really excited to release their final projects at the end of the season, and I cannot wait to see what they come up with!
–Gerard
