ROBOTICS LORE GOES CRAZY

BRO THE WILDEST THING HAPPENED TODAY IN ROBOTICS!!!

So I'm in a FIRST robotics team, and we qualified for District Champs (also called DCMP. So we're going against teams from all over our section on wed, thurs, fri, and sat). But our school somehow manages to royally f*ck up SO BAD that instead of the 20+ people that want to go, only 11 can actually go (they only got one van?????? Somehow????? And it could only fit 11 ppl). The hotel rooms (since it's far away from our town) are fine tho. It's just the transport. Haha.

So, obviously, almost the entire team is pissed at the school. So then the team leaders pick who's gonna go, ect. ect., and they're left with 2 free spaces (The other 9 are taken up by: 5 for the ppl who drive the robot, 1 coder, 1 captain, 1 scouter, and 1 mechanical person). Now, for some stupid reason, our school decides, instead of, y'know, CONSULTING THE CAPTAIN AND MENTORS THAT ACTUALLY INTERACT WITH THE TEAM ON A NEAR-DAILY BASIS AND HAVE AN IDEA OF WHO THEY WANT TO GO, they're gonna decide who the other two people are themselves!

(I'm pretty sure they chose by their opinion of who's gonna deal with missing 2 days of school the best, since we're gonna miss thurs and fri for this, but whatever)

Obviously, it doesn't go so well. Everyone's whining and complaining (and one person even burst out into tears twice) about not being chosen (I wasn't either btw but we're probs gonna qualify next year, so I don't mind much. There's a livestream!!!).

And so, the captain makes a Slack groupchat (with ppl that I think she wants to go too but didn't make it???? Maybe?????), and we begin to scheme. 

Idea: what if we can convince parents to carpool a bunch of ppl?

Answer: Nope! The school doesn't wanna be liable for crashes or something!!!! (Which I understand, but c'mON MAN!!!!)

       ...what about peer pressure?

Says a brave soul.

       ...Peer pressure?

Says everyone else.

And guess what happened.

Well, more like parent pressure but ANYWAYYYYYY

So essentially parents were so upset by the fact that their kids couldn't go to DCMP that they send a bunch of corporate lingo angry emails to the teacher that runs the team at my school (mind you, this person has never set foot in the robotics lab????? Somehow?????). But the parents manage to pressure her into letting some of them carpool kids.

So now like 9 other kids can go! Including me!!!!

God, I love our school...! /j

But kudos to the parents I'll be forever grateful 🩷🩷🩷