Monday Memory: Starting ROV club at WWU

Throughout my next three years of high school I focused on school and sports. I didn't really care about ROVs anymore. I was enjoying being in public school (I was taught at home from 1st through 10th grade) and the new friends I made there. I liked being one of the top girls on cross country team, the only triple jumper in track and running the 4x400m relay and competing at State. I preferred being the cross country and track team captain over a robots team captain. Then when I started school at Western Washington University I was offered a seat on the Women's Rowing Team (which for those of you who haven't heard of them, they won nationals 7 years in a row). I spent about over 25hrs a week at rowing practices. 

My sophomore year I decided I didn't have time to row anymore. Waking up at 4:10am every morning meant having to go to bed at 8:00pm if I wanted to be half awake during my classes. Constant exhaustion (and no break on Saturday), cold and rainy weather, blistered hands, and a lack of social life didn't quite out weight my love of rowing under the stars, watching the sun rise, making amazing friends, and being a varsity athlete on the #1 DII rowing team in the nation. Sometimes I wish I still rowed, but then I think about all of the things I get to do now, that I couldn't have done otherwise.

My favorite class I've taken so far at WWU was General Chemistry. Why? My professor. He was new to the university setting, but that made it even better. He had taught middle/high school student before so the analogies to tricycles and s'mores made chemistry easy to grasp. He was also the kind of professor that was able to get the class to actually WANT to ask/answer questions in class. By the end of the second week of class he knew the names of all 200 students. He was always blowing things up in class. By the end of the first quarter I was considering changing my major to Chemistry. 

Right before Christmas break my professor started out the class time telling us about research opportunities on campus and that if we want to go to grad school we need to do something to make ourselves stand out. He ended his pep talk with: "If any of you want to build robots, come talk to me". That was it! That was the moment when I knew I wanted to get back into building ROVs again. I thought about the time commitment over break and when I got back in January I went to his office and talked over my idea to start a ROV club on campus. He agreed to be our clubs mentor and helped me get the resources I needed. (He is also the one that convinced me I was capable of pursuing medical school and shouldn't hold myself back, but shoot for the starts.)

The first year as a club was a rough one. We (all 5 of us) started late and the only money we had was the $50 that my professor gave us to get started. 

More to come....