Iron Riders Website (maintained by the current team)
FIRST Robotics Website
September 2013 – April 2016

The Iron Riders are a FIRST league robotics team from Roosevelt High School in Seattle Washington. Every year, the team competes in a FIRST robotics challenge in which it has six weeks to design, build, and code a fully functioning robot. After six weeks, the team tests its robot against those of other teams in regional (and sometimes international) competitions.

I joined team 4180, the Iron Riders, due to advice from my computer science teacher. Basic knowledge of Java initiated me into the software department. There, I learned how to efficiently code in a group. My time implementing standard naming principles, sharing crisp code, and researching collective errors have shown me the significance of cooperative problem solving in programming a large project.

My first year as an Iron Rider showed me the pertinence of code in robotics. In my second year, I decided to teach software to incoming members and discovered a passion for enabling others. In my third year of robotics, I decided to lead.

I became vice president in order to provide members with the resources they wanted, but I discovered that most of my time was spent managing systems that the team never knew it needed. I found my own significance in programming by realizing its capacity to serve the club. Managing and cleaning the team’s file system as well as developing a more cohesive club website helped give the club some clout.

Overall, the experience was invaluable. I am extremely proud of everything that the team has done and everything that I was able to contribute; from new software curriculum to weekly “Iron Updates” about build season progress.