Joseph Rodriguez
February 20, 2020
Eng 1121
Word Count: 1006
My FIRST DC
My discourse community is FIRST robotics, basically it’s a high school club that consists of 30 students (female and male) and 10 mentors who work together to create a functioning robot starting the first Saturday of January. On that day, the game is revealed by FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) which shows what this year’s game consists of, how the game is played and what type of robot you need to create to play the game at its fullest potential. Each participating team is given 6 weeks to create and finalize their robot. After the 6 weeks, over 100+ competitions take place around the United States. This is the time when you take your robot that you’ve worked on the 6 weeks prior, to compete against another club’s robot. The winners of the competitions get a spot to participate in the FIRST Robotics Championship at Detroit, Michigan where you play against other winning robots on the first week of May. This makes it a discourse community because everyone in the club has to work together to build a robot to compete with. My initial assumptions about robotics were a bunch of nerds building on a robot and people who are the smartest in the school can only join.
I researched this group by going through my text messages and remembering previous conversations with other members in the robotics room. Through the process of gathering information, I learned that the conversation that has occurred was mostly through text messages about helping each other out with our class so we can keep up with the rest of our class when we leave for competition. More specifically I remember a text message from my friend Edison (personal communication, March 24, 2019) saying that he would send me photos of important notes for the upcoming exam that he already took earlier in the day. Which I realize now that we as a club did everything as a team not just in robotics but also in our classes. We helped each other out to get the best grade possible and if we had no chance at getting the best grade, we would take the hit on our grades together, and laugh about because we know that once competition ends we would help each other boost the grades back up to high 90%. This community changes your lifestyle in a good way. The people in the club make it feel like a second home; you always have someone to talk to; about anything like personal issues and school struggles. You created unbreakable bounds with people because you get to see them everyday of the week in the robotics classroom. It goes further than just hanging out with friends in the classroom, you start to hang out with them in your free time when you are not at the robotics classroom. You go through many hardships, happiness with each other and sometimes you can meet the person you love in the robotics club. This community is more than a club; it’s a family. In robotics, we love engaging with our community by doing free science fairs where we show kids and parents the things our robots can do. We guide kids on how to control the robots and answer any question the kids or parents have and we educate the people what FIRST Robotics is, how the skills you learn while being in the club can be useful to the real world. We also do services like feeding the less fortunate and cleaning parks. Our community values having a good reputation, being responsible, reliable, respectable, and trustworthy. If you want to become a member, you have to be interested in the robotics club and have the ability to make friends and work with others. There is a small formal process. Basically you just have to apply on a google form which is displayed around the school then you attend an informative session. Then you get interviewed, after that’s done. You’ll be emailed back if you got in the team, from there you’r an official member. Then you undergo basic tool guidance, which you are taught by a mentor on how to use a drill, sewing machine, and how to locate the common tools used in the robotics classroom. Then you will be tested on those things, if you pass; you are allowed to use the tools in the robotics classroom, if you don’t pass; you will not be allowed to use any of the tools in the room until you pass the test. So the members communicate by talking in person in the robotics room. When the members aren’t at the room working, they communicate through an app called GroupMe where we have a group chat with all the members and mentors so any member can get in contact with anybody in the club to talk about anything at any time.
In conclusion, from doing this project I learned that the robotics club welcomed me with open arms by always having my back in any way possible, they never left me on my own to go through multiple school struggles like keeping up to date with my homework and helping with my exams while we were traveling for competition. Also the way people cared for each other within the club was surprisingly confusing to me because I would never think the people that I build a robot with knowing nothing about the other people would care about my life in general or my school life. The people’s selflessness is what made me rethink the way I initially saw the robotics club which was a bunch of nerds working on a robot but it’s much more than that. Most importantly, the people in the robotics club are the most selfless human beings I have ever met, they would sacrifice anything for me and I would do the same. They have made me a more selfless person than I will ever be and I wouldn’t change it, thanks to FIRST robotics.
