Jumping in the Pool Dogpaddling!

This year I am coaching an FTC Robotics team for the first time (for me and our school). Here are some of my students at our first scrimmage. We were so nervous and being all "girly" and judging ourselves harshly, me included.

Things going through our minds:

* We'll embarrass ourselves.

* Everyone else is better.

* We won't know what we're doing.

* We're nervous.

* We don't know the process and aren't ready.

* Our robot is not finished yet.

But that (obviously) is ridiculous, even though it still streams through our thoughts. STILL. If we stifle ourselves with self doubt and angst, we'll never try anything new, and we'll never improve, and we'll never have the thrill of learning and experiencing new things.

Thoughts that got us through:

* Everyone has to start somewhere.

* We're a rookie team. Other teams have had more years of experience.

* Let's give ourselves a break, we're WAY further than we were in September.

* People are here to help us.

* This is a learning experience. 

* We can do it.

Ultimately, we had a blast, though we were super tired from the adrenaline and stress and lack of sleep and worry. We learned a ton. We met nice people. We can make progress. We had cool t-shirts. We're on our way to more robotics challenges. Our pit area rocked: