It's finally over...

[b0w53r]

Last night we all said our goodbyes. We threw a little party with pizza and drinks. Our parents came in for the first and last glance they'll get, except at VCU. It feels so strange not to be worrying about staying after school. WHat to do with all the time?

[UsmanB]

i was like "finallllllly we get rid of that sucker!" actually i love the bot, we spent alot of good time working on it. but i had to go home and finish animation which i just got done uploading. stayed up all night puting that junk together.

[Kim Masi]

Our team had a countdown clock that was visible from everywhere in the room that told us to the second how much time was left in the build season...Every day as I watched time whittle away, I thought about how much thought, effort, teamwork and determination went into building this robot. Now that it is finally over, It is amazing to see what our team has put together.

Even though our first competition is 16 days away, I honestly dont have a clue as to what I am going to do with my time until then.

[Emily Pease]

At this point, I'm really looking forward to doing laundry, eating a square meal, and getting to bed at a reasonable hour.

[akshar]

this was my official first and last year with FIRST. im a senior on a rookie team with only 10 kids. most of which didnt know what we were doing until three weeks ago. its been a good experience and i hope it keeps going. we packed up the crate last nite wiht a robot weight of 118 lbs! lots of hard work and feelings went into the crate as well as around it. unlike the other teams, we work in a warehouse of the Cooley group, so they were able to forklift our crate to their shipping dock, and its currently waiting for FedEx to come pick it up

[russell]

I had this kind of sad feeling. Then last night I had a nightmare that someone stole our robot out of the mail... It was horrible.

[doyler]

We all learned a lot these past 6 weeks mechanical and programming

We also learned that a robot can be your best friend and worst enemy at the same time

FIRST has given us a great experience and Tourettes Syndrome at 5 in the morning ship day

[Zing]

As an animator I had the joy of showing the video to the rest of the team and pumping my fist in the air as they cheered.

I’m dang proud of what I’ve done the past few weeks. And just as admiring of the rest of the team for the work that they’ve completed.

[Kyle Love]

You say it's been 6 weeks???? Well, yah I guess it has...sure hasn't seemed like it! Well we just shipped the bot out 45 minutes or so ago. Now we can count down until the regionals! LET'S ALL GO NUTS! ROBOTS! ROBOTS!

[doyler]

They took 6 weeks of our lives and all the emotions that went with them and put them in a box...not to be seen for a while

[Goobergunch]

We just shipped our robot eight minutes ago - talk about pushing things right to the limit! The FedEx truck with our bot in it contained only robots - our crate was right next to 104's crate, and there were three or four others behind ours. Looks like FedEx has a rather specific cargo today....

Now it's time for sleep, homework, and a resumption of normal life.

*rotates Chief Information Officer hat (which currently has the "Lead Programmer" side in the front) so the "Head Scout" side is facing front*

Wait a minute, I still have to pull up all the information I can on the other 55 teams competing at the Chesapeake Regional!

*gets busy again*

[KoRnPoP]

As being the manager of the Varisty Volleyball team I sure did miss being after school sweeping the floor, setting the net up and filling up the girls water bottles. Well last night we had a demostration for the parents and than we put the robot up into the crate and boxed it up, I missed it when we had to put it in there so much that before we put that last piece on the box we had to follow our captains footsteps and kiss the robot one last time before it left. We have a picture of the captain kissing it one day that we were practicing and that like is below:
http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/pi...&quiet=Verbose

[Kate00]

If you truly think about how much thought, time, blood, frustration and elation were put into your robot, then it really is a truly special thing. It isn't just a robot: it was life for six weeks.

What makes me really sad, however, is not the physical robot being shipped. It's that I probably will barely talk to my friends on the team anymore, since there are none in my grade. A lot of them are graduating this year, which means that I will probably never see them again. I'll really miss the chance to talk to them, and sort out my life while doing it. There is competition, but no more late meetings, no more jokes to laugh over for days, no more companionship of the greatest people that I've ever met. That is really what I miss the most.

Six weeks isn't enough time to be in the companionship of my teammates, my friends, the most wonderful group of girls I have ever met. Thank you all.

[Joshua May]

Originally Posted by Lisa Perez

As a senior, I was thinking how much I was going to miss doing this next year with 573.

I know exactly how you feel. It didn't hit me until a few minutes after we shipped the robot, this is my last time. I'll certainly return as a mentor for as along as I can, but this is truly the last time as a student. Wow, tear-jerking almost.

[Liz C]

Packing up the robot seemed like a blur - we had girls running out between break, lunches, (unimportant classes too..with permission of course) to help put it in the crate aftwe we did some extremly last minute tweaking . I left school seeing the crate on our driveway awaiting the fedex truck. It wasn't until I got home that I realized wow, its over. This is so trite, but geez, it amazes me how fast those 6 weeks went by. Now we're just going to prepare for events,which is important, but not nearly as time consuming. We were trying to think of what we're going to do now with all this spare time ::twiddles thumbs::