[cavegirl47]

I didn't read every single reply to your post on here, but I bet there are some other teams that are like mine. Our team has approximately 15-20 student members on it (depending on how you determine membership) and only one of those students is a girl: ME.

I don't know exactly how I became the only female on the team; last year we had probably 7 girls on a 25-member team, but apparently, when we lost some of our members, we lost ALL (or almost all) the girls at once. Anyway, it doesn't bother me that much, being the only girl there.

I am the marketing manager for GRR, as you can see from my signature, so I do most of the PR work, along with help from mainly my family. Unfortunately, we don't have many boys interested in anything other than the actual building of the robot (electronics, mechanics, computer design, etc.), so I am pretty much alone in the PR team. I worry that nobody will pay any attention to our need of money until it's too late and we find out we spent $6,000 for our kit of parts and first competition just to find out we didn't raise enough money to pay for transportation and a hotel.

On top of that, I am one of the 2 team captains, while the other is another senior boy, and, according to our school's last pep rally and this boy's constant reminders, we are the Team King and Queen (don't ask). I've been at the shop almost every day, excluding Sundays when the team rests and yesterday to do a band audition and go to my winter formal. I've been involved in all the decision-making about our robot's design, and I plan to do anything I can in the shop (electronics, mechanics, computer design, etc.) that they need me to do, despite the fact that I have almost no experience in machining or doing programming.

I'm feeling a bit overwhelmed, since I have the added responsibility of getting our PR packets and presentations out to businesses, in my own spare time, on top of doing all the robotics work at the shop each day. But I still love it, and I can't wait to see how our robot turns out. After all, this is what I want to do with my life - I want to work for NASA in the future, possibly on robotic missions at the Jet Propulsions Laboratory, in Pasedena, CA.

Well, that's about it. I'm going to go do homework now so I can continue my never-ending education. Good luck to all of you! I hope to see some of you at the Sacramento Regional, if we can ever get the money to go there!