[Aaron Lussier]

When I started up in college I attended Wentworth while walking down the road to Northeastern to help out with team 125. I realized after a few meetings that this team wasnt like my old team. They didnt have one BIG sponsor that paid for everything they asked for and gave them huge amounts of money and working space.

To me seeing that, it was FIRST cluture shock, I honestly did not know what exactly I was going to be able to do on the team. Through out the pre-season I slowly got used to the new workshop and the new people that surrounded me, and then slowly I realized that I was no longer the one who took orders, I was the one giving them, not orders Persay, morelike sugesstions pushing the new students in the right direction.

Unfortanetly for certain reasons I decided to not return for the spring semester, this meant I would not be helping 125. I had a falling out with my Major at Wentworth, Mechanical Engineering. I decided I needed to distance my self as much as I could from any and all things Engineering, including FIRST.

However over christmas break, I got the bug, you all have gotten it before... Kickoff, yea I couldnt wait to go to kickoff and see what this years game entailed. Thinking simply I would go to Kickoff, watch and leave. That never happend, I stayed for the design meetings, eventually I started going to meetings again. Soon enough I was doing more than I had done in my Senior year in High School.

Through out the build season I used past lessons learned to keep the new kids on track as I had done with 125, but this was back with my Old team, so I felt much more comfortable doing it. I kept Morale up with everybody telling them it was going to be done on time, I always made sure everybody was doing something.

Toward the End of the season, one of the head engineeris with 151 approached me and said, that becasuse I had put in so many long hours as a mentor they decided that they were going to pay my way to Nationals. I was in and utter state of shock when they told me this. I had to idea that they would ever do something like that for me.

The last build night however was filled with downfalls, we found out due to center of gravity issuses our robot could not climb the lip as we had designed it to. Everybody who had worked so hard on it tried to be positive... but we couldnt it didnt work... what else was there? We shabbly packed both crates and left to go home and get some sleep.

I guess John said it best.

"You just have to make sure the ups outnumber the downs."

This year they did, we did great at regionals are are hoping to do better at Nationals

and Ken to answer your question...

Better than I could have ever Imagined!

-Aaron