girls ?

[Katy]

I am fairly sure we have always had a girl captain and this is the first year there are more guys one core team than girls (this is our 4th year). We have six elected leadership positions four of which are girls. (This is our first year with this much structure to things to we are still working on how it all works.) I for one am one of the four and learning to weld steel...can do it but not well enough to be of real use yet (I will be learning Al soon hopefully). I do a little electronics a lot of design, did the crate with some help, and then just using the tools to cut the Al or whatever along the line to fit into the latest theoretically brilliant but realistically disastrous project. (I’m kidding, really we aren’t too awful about staying on earth). Most of us (both guys and girls) do a little of everything with the exception of programming and sometimes electronics as far as building goes (those two have their own little groups). We don't have a real machine room (save a little area with two drill presses a chop saw an old band saw a grinder and a few hand drills) but everybody can do most of those (some hamsters too). You could say we are the opposite of most teams, the guys do more of the specialty things such as organizing day to day things, keeping inventory, web page, programming (mostly) and electronics (mostly). Chairman’s is new…so it is just kinda mine for the moment. Regional stuff is another girl (also new…before it just magically happened with parents doing it) and fundraising is split between one guy and one girl (that’s new too, we lived off UW and NASA grants before.) Day to day…who cares really? The guy girl stuff only really comes up for us when it is time to book hotel rooms for regionals.

Our team has been fairly much controlled by girls a great deal (...somehow it wasn't the guy's idea that we spray their hair hot pink and put zip ties in it...) We were the team in hot pink and black last year that ran around with the toy hamsters that sang (Seattle regional). Personally I haven't found the whole "girls don't do that" or the girls must simply be decoration mentality inside FIRST in team kids or mentors. It is more common from outside…although sometimes people assume I don’t know what I am talking about until I prove it but honestly I think that is just because I’m terrible at explaining the little world in my head.