Okay. I’m going to be honest. I didn’t love VEX. In my small town, VEX was the only STEM activity that was available to me. I participated for three years on three teams and while I was okay at it, I don’t think it was ever going to be my happy place. VEX is an international robotics competition modelled after competitive sports. Think wrestling for programmers. Every year, a new game is dropped to teams around the world who then work to build robots to play the game against each other. It involves a ton of strategy, mechanical engineering, programming, and teamwork. I especially benefited from learning the importance of organizational skills and documenting as the team iterated through different ideas. Our community has a great reputation in the international VEX world and we are lucky to have such an impressive resource in our rural area. I am proud that my all-girl team won the Amaze Award. I learned how to build with metal and code autonomous movement, but it never made my heart sing. I very recently gave up my spot on team 7842C. It was hard to acknowledge because I know the world loves a girl who can build robots, but the truth is that I was mostly doing it because it was what was available to me. When opportunities opened up to work on more theatre projects and run a BC tour with Zenius Labs, it became clear that I would either have to clone myself or give something up. I’m grateful I had the opportunity to do VEX, but a month outside of it and I am only now realizing how relieved I am that I have moved on. I guess that learning what I don’t like is just as important as learning what I love.
Our all girls team was featured in the competition press release in 2021