What does your school think of robotics?

[pwilczynski]

Our team comes from a very small school (about 450 people) so most of the people know about us. I would say that there is a large amount of support from administration, respect from the teachers and not much from the students. Because we are such a small school, most of the students who are not involved have at least a few friends who are, so we don't get made fun of much. There are people who call us nerds, but its all in good fun
Overall, we have a pretty supporting school. However, jurisdiction-wise, we are probably the most troublesome group. We aren't a team, with letters or anything, and we really aren't a club. I mean, what club meets almost every day for 6 weeks and sometimes pulls 40+ hour weekends? So in that respect we have a slight problem with the administration in the specifics of what we are allowed to do and where we are allowed to go.

[TEAM456MS]

I come from a school of a little over 1,200 and everyone knows exactly what the robotics team is. We are one of the most respected groups in the school and are considered the "popular" group in school.

[Daniel Morse]

At our school, school pride is below zero. I would assume the most common thought of the average student at my school is "I am not smart enough to do that" or "I am not that nerdy". Nerds are not really made fun of at our school, they are left alone, and other people usually just place them in a group that they will be a part of. This basically means that we are left alone as a team, people know we exist, but don't care.

[SURVIVORfan44]

The people of my high school could care less about robotics. They are too simple minded to understand anything. I feel sorry for them. (Well, some of them). We are the only team or activity that ever wins anything at our school. If you combined all the games our sports teams have won, they still wouldn't compare to how many matches we have won. So once our school knew that we were actually successful, they decided to cut us off and canceled our robotics team. Sounds foolish eh? The people that were on the robotics team aren't really considered "nerds" at our school. We had people on our team such as the valedictorian, the prom queen, the homecoming king, and the quarterback of the football team.

[Nita]

Originally Posted by june_2008

At our school, the band geeks and robotics geeks (which are pretty much the same people) are pretty much just considered geeks and otherwise ignored by the majority of the student body....

A lot of our team members were also in band but most of them quit after their freshmen year due to lack of space in their schedules.

Anyway, my school knows us as 'the people who sell truffles' because that's our major fundraiser.

[Clam]

Originally Posted by Nita

A lot of our team members were also in band but most of them quit after their freshmen year due to lack of space in their schedules.

Anyway, my school knows us as 'the people who sell truffles' because that's our major fundraiser.

Yea, and frankly I am known to be "the truffle seller"

But it's more than just that, some people I've talked to who aren't in robotics think we're a bunch of smart people/ geeks/ nerds/ genieses... u get the idea. And that their intelligence cannot compare and status cannot go down that low to join. But they dunno what they're missing! Seesh!

T_T most of the people at our school don't even know of our existence..

[lpbangel]

they show a lot of support at our school

[Josh Murphy]

people at our school don't even care so people don't feel bad. it is the best thing going here at our school but is so lowly recognized. as they say the black cloud that covers pch prevents that from happening. we were at the board meeting a few weeks ago and our occra team was highlighted and the people there were actually shocked at our success we had the best program in the county winning 8 awards in 6 weeks plus the founders award similar to the chairmans so it was a good year for us but yes we are overlooked!!!!!!!!

[MyNameHere]

Most people at my school either don't know or don't acknowledge the fact that we have a robotics team. But, it is not seen as nerdy as it could be b/c we also have a science olympiad team, and that has a good number of kids. To be perfectly honest though, the kids in robotics and science olympiad are the "nerds" of the school.

[kawelch]

The students on our Robotics team must deal with open hostilities from other students and even some teachers. Now that we are in build season several teachers that normally give small assignments or no homework have increased the load to make it difficult for Robotics. Our students have been assaulted because it is a "smarts" activity. Every day that the entire team does not just quit I consider a victory.

[sheyna]

we are definitely the "geek" club of our school. my school is an all sports school if u in nething besides sports such as robotics or debate you are considered a geek. because we devote all of our time to robotics our school mates gave us the nickname lab rats which is out team name. they don't make fun of us they kind of admire us. they constantly ask us how we do it some of them are just afraid to join because they think it is extremely hard. when we go to competition i kno they are not going to be there to support us because they dont have a way to get out to the competition, which is kind of sad .

~sheyna

[Aburame Shino]

"What's FIRST Robotics?"

I hear that one a lot whenever I'm telling somebody about the team. The only people who really know about FIRST are the people who take multiple technology classes and/or go to Tesla, our school district's engineering charter school.

[Zyik]

" We have a robotics club?" is the response I get the most. Sometimes I talk about and people say something about a kid who isn't in the club and claims he is and because of that is saying he's better then everyone. *sigh*

[IraJason]

I must say, seeing as we are a rookie team, we are actually quite well known in our school. People have asked me about the competitions and what we do after hearing about the team on our school announcements. Our school district has given us quite a bit of exposure, with our picture being on the school district website (which everyone must go to in our school to get onto the internet), saying our results on the daily annoucements, and allowing our local paper to write a feature article on our team and the Technology and Engineering Club as a whole. (our FIRST team is just one part of a much larger club that involves TSA, FIRST, and a few other tech related subjects.)

Probably because I can be identified with the smarter people in the school, a surprising amount of sports guys ask me about the team whenever they annouce something about us or put us on the website. But then again, we didn't really have anything that remotely resembled FIRST before this year, and a lot of people are amazed that we are able to build a robot from scratch.

It also helps that everyone knows the Tech Club as the ones who used to sell Krispy Kremes during midterms and finals... all of the ones near us closed down, so we had to switch to Dunkin Donuts this year...