What I learned from First Lego League 🤖

As a student in today’s world, I’ve explored a lot of different extracurricular activities, and one of my favorites is First Lego League. I’ve participated in this competition for 3 years, and from those years I’ve learned a lot — both within robotics and in basic project-habits. And I think that because of what I’ve learned, I’ve changed for the better.

Welcome to this week’s post from the Co-founder’s Desk! Today’s post is all about the many things I’ve learned from FLL, and how they apply to many things. For those of you who are new to the blog, you can learn more about right 👉here 👈.

First Lego League, or FLL, is a robotics competition for students in grades 4–8, in which students compete in three different aspects, forming one team’s project. The three parts are as follows: Robot, which is where teams create and program a robot designed to complete a series of tasks within a given amount of time. The second part is Project, which is where students research a problem within each “season’s” theme and create a solution. The final aspect is Core Values, which is created to encourage teams to maintain a cooperative and professional team.

My journey in FLL began in the 5th grade. Back then, my interests consisted of robotics, drawing, and tennis. Although tennis didn’t really play a part in my FLL team, I was given the privilege of having a team which helped me tie my other passions in. So with that; here’s what I learned.

1.Step outside of your comfort zone.

When I first joined my team, I thought that the only thing I would do is the robot aspect of the team. You see, I began doing robotics in the second grade and that is all I knew about when it came to First Lego League. So I decided that I would do the robot and only the robot part. However when my coach told us who would be doing what, I was given the disappointing news that I would not be in the robot part, but in the project aspect. And while I was upset for a solid week; I ended up being grateful for his decision because it changed a lot about how I would do things.

Thanks to being part of the project ‘team’ I discovered my passion for drawing and designing and ended up serving as an instrumental part of our team, thanks to our coach providing me with the opportunity to create a comic book for our project. Thanks to this book, as well as our team’s great core values and robot, we were able to place first in the state and made it to the international competition.

2.Reach out to the community.

For our project, we talked all about the problems of Nor’easters in certain areas of Boston. And while doing some basic research about the issue may have been sufficient to get a decent idea on the issue and its solution’s validity, reaching out to experts on the topic provided us with an even better understanding of why our project worked, and where it needed some improvement.

Of course, getting information from experts is great! But once you’ve consolidated all of your research from your various sources, you end up being an expert as well — which means that you have the chance to pay it forward. Soon after placing first in the state, we decided it was time to share our ideas with others; which is why we presented it at a local 4h event and spread our ideas to others. I think that thanks to this idea of broadening our research, I have been helped a ton when it comes to some of my bigger school projects.

3.Have fun with it!

To conclude, I want to say that it is important to make sure you have fun because it is so important that with any competition, you have fun with it. One of the most important things that anyone can learn is that no matter what you do, it will not seem like work if you’re having fun.

Also, check out First’s website to learn more about FLL

Thanks for reading! Hit us up with any questions in the comment box below, or at [email protected] 📭

Want to stay in the loop? Follow us, and sign up to start recording your accomplishments using our AI Resume Builder.