My Path in Life

I have always had my definition of cool. In elementary school, I would hang out with the stereotypical cool kids. I played three sports, with my skills ranging from decent, to pretty good. I even participated in AAU for basketball and All-Stars for baseball. This continued until I began high school, where I began to divert from the chosen path of many and make my way. I had always been rather studious, participating in the science fair, always asking questions about why and how things worked, and I even asked for extra math work in elementary school as I figured it was more interesting and beneficial than staring at a TV or playing video games. 

When I entered middle school, I joined the robotics team, which worked all year long, going to tournaments to compete with and against other teams from all over the Twin States. At first, it was just a cool club in which I could participate on days I had no sports practices, but it soon became my whole world. I started spending countless hours at robotics, problem-solving, tinkering, and finally getting a finished product I could proudly take credit for. 

In my first year of high school, I made the varsity soccer team. I was devoted to robotics, but soccer practice was right after school, every day of the week, only leaving weekends for robotics. As a result, we didn’t do all too well early in the season, and it was only after basketball season ended, that I had made the painful decision to focus on my future, and quit baseball. That meant I could devote all of my energy to building a work of art.

I am now a sophomore in high school and will inherit the team captain role next year. I have spent over 500 hours on robotics so far this season, and there is still much to be done. We started the season by winning our first-ever award at a tournament, leaving our state championship with two, one of which was the MVP. Last year we had a losing record, but this year, we have an 87% win rate and are globally ranked in the top 50. When I look back at my previous years in robotics, I think of how far I have come and the friends I have made. I wonder where I would be if I hadn’t chosen the path less traveled, where I would end up. Would I still be out there, posing, with no real clue of who I was? But I will never know, now that I have learned to embrace the role in our society as a nerd.