Although all of our robot building and other team-related activities take place in our school, we get almost no (good) attention.
A few days ago, someone next to me in one of my classes was reading about us winning our District Chairman's Award. Someone next to him said "Why are you reading about those nerds?" He proceeded to say "No clue" and closed out his tab.
I show my friend a lot of stuff that has to do with robotics, including swerve drive (thanks Team 16, Bomb Squad for your unveil videos
), our shooter, and other things. He always replies to me "I could build something better. That looks stupid."
We demoed our 2012 robot in the cafeteria at lunch, and someone came up to us and said "Your robot is really loud." and walked away. In the same lunch period, someone else came up and said "My brother could build a better robot." and walked away.
It seems that the people from my school (I'm not sure about our other 2 schools) have no respect for engineering, and the six weeks of hard work we put into our robots.