when your dad says “don’t make it a late night” it means come home before he wakes up to go to work
When everyone in the machine shop is standing on a table with the robot working on it, rather than putting it on the floor, to save the time it would take to get it off the table. mentors too! (haha i have a picture of this one if you want to see it)
when you are replacing zip-ties with needle and thread because “zip ties are too heavy”
when you wear safety glasses on your head durring the school day, through all your classes, and nobody bothers to ask why anymore
when you have tools in your pockets throughout the schoolday just to save time finding them later
when you know the part number of every componenent, even screws, on the robot, where to find its cad file, its dimensions for placement, and where it belongs in the grand scheme of things
when you know the size of the screwdriver, wrench, and allen/hex key needed for EVERY single piece of hardware
when you can do the calculations for how much wieght will be lost by lightweighting a material because you have the densities for almost all of the materials memorized and can do the d=mv calulation in your head
when you tell people to stop painting things to save weight
when “the big manly drill” is a commonly understood title for a specific drill
when you find yourself and your best friend standing atop a 10 fool ladder, eating gummybears out of a bowl, simply because you can, and then realize simultaineously “you know what? i… really don’t even like gummy bears… like … at all…?”
when you decide to hold the radar gun “ghetto style”
when you pay more attention to the fact that a chain is loose rather than the fact that the cheerleading team is practicing in the gym right next to you
when the janitor knows you by first name and knows to leave the lights off in the cad room when your working in it
when every meal in the past 4 days has come from a fast food place, despite the fact that it was only 4 or 5 meals anyway
when your justification for washing you hands AFTER you eat is “you can get robot on your food, but you can’t get food on your robot 
" (that is a quote i am often heard saying”
when you can’t tell if its caramel on your hand, or chain grease, and you just eat it anyway
when your parents realize that you spend more time at the school doing robotics then actually doing school “Yay days over!” "well… for me the day has just begun "
when you’re spending your lunches and studies at school working in the shop
when you realize that you’ve spent the 2 days after the robot has been crated up recovering from the 4 days prior.
when the difference between breakfast, lunch and dinner has nothing to do with the time but the order in which they are eaten
when you’re so sick of pizza that you eat it just to get it out of your sight
when you look at a picture of a robot on a computer screen and try to hold the middle mouse button to rotate it (CAD people probably understand this one)
when 4 of the 5 team members in your physics class are absent on tuesday and the one that isn’t calls you to complain about it
when you consider sanding off the paint to save weight
when you mount the camera exactly where your mentor said he would slap you if you put it there, just to keep the software team happy
when you realize you know as much about the electronics as the electronics lead, and sometimes more
when your software lead shouts “your safety is becoming less and less of a concern to me!” because he wants to test the software while your working on the robot
when taking a break means taking your safety glasses off
when your justification to your parents for working even though you’re sick is “my body can heal itself, the robot can’t!”
when in your sleep you are thinking of ways to lightweight things
when the electronics box has gashed up your arm so much that you consider documenting your blood as part of the robot weight weight
when you are the single reason the medkit is low on band-aids ("…lowsy electronics box… darn master link…")
when your mom joins the parent group (the people who bring us food on weekends) just to actually see you
alright im sure I can come up with more but thats it for this post
