[25-31; 32-39] The build season for robotics is six weeks from the first week of January to the second week in February. You have six weeks to construct an industry-grade robot that will complete a challenge. For example, one year we build our robot to play soccer and another year we built the robot to shoot frisbees and climb a pyramid made from piping in the center of the field. These robots are five feet tall and one hundred and twenty pounds. The design process involved reading through the manual that NASA and FIRST distributed to each team. We had to engineer everything. We made CAD models of it, built a prototype, and programmed it.
[37-39; 43-47] During my junior year of high school, I was able to take off two months of schooling because I was homeschooled and moved it to June through August. When I was in build season, I put in a hundred hours a week, for six weeks, in robotics. And we ended up making it to the world competition that year. It paid off and I learned so much from my mentors (engineers and computer scientists) and just like my other peers and like working in the engineering process from like start to finish. It’s amazing. Going through it five times, definitely helped me now in college. But, yeah. So, I accredit my ability to engage in robotics that much to being home schooled.