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Alissa H

Being the only girl in the Robotics Club doesn’t generally affect our team dynamics. I attribute this to the fact that we are supervised by two female coaches, Mrs. Echternach and Mrs. Beachy. However, throughout the course of the season, there have been some minor things that differ between the boys and I. For instance, when we finally finished our robot, Hercules, I wanted to put googly-eyes on him for decorative purposes. Not surprisingly, the boys were not a fan of this!

At the beginning of the season, I thought that being the only girl would bring a lot of problems. I assumed my teammates would not value my opinion, but quickly found out I was wrong. During the first couple of weeks, I resolved that I wasn’t capable of contributing to the engineering aspects of building a robot. I decided to just participate in the managing side of the team. However, Mrs. Beachy pushed me to explore the engineering side and as a result, I had a lot more fun and input to the building process. If we didn’t have Mrs. Beachy, an aerospace engineer, as our coach, I probably would have stuck to my little bubble of self-doubt and let the boys handle all of the engineering jobs.  And, if I wasn’t pushed to explore more of the engineering world, I probably wouldn’t be staying with the robotic club next year. However, the experience has been so good that I am planning to join the team again.

Being on the Lititz Christian Robotics Team has challenged my doubts about what I am capable of and Mrs. Beachy inspired me to want to learn more about the engineering field. Maybe one day, I’ll work in an engineering career and inspire other girls to want to learn more about robotics and engineering, just like Mrs. Beachy did for me.