Want to keep reading?

You've reached the end of your complimentary access. Subscribe for as little as $4/month.

Subscribe
Aready a Subscriber ? Sign In

ROBOMIND is a new podcast dedicated to robotics. Listen to the first episode here!

Transcript:

Hello, my name is Misha Ahmed, and I am your host of this podcast series called ROBOMIND. I know you may be wondering, what does ROBOMIND mean? ROBOMIND is combination of two things: robotics and mind. I love robotics, and I believe that it shapes how you think and it shapes your mind. That is why I called my podcast ROBOMIND.

Now a little bit about me! My name is Misha, and I'm 11 years old. I love robotics and my nickname is Mushu, which brings me to our episodes name. I know you may be wondering, "I'll Make an Engineer Out of You" that's the weirdest thing ever! No, it's not. It's a perfect name. You want to know why? Because my nickname's Mushu like the dragon from Mulan, and we're both very similar, both loud, both talkative, both really fun people. Well, he's not a person, but it's okay. And I just wanted to inspire you to maybe do robotics someday in the future or just learn a little bit more about it. And today I'm going to tell you a story that happened to me during my first ever robotics competition.

New things can be really scary, and this one was one of them. I was literally terrified because I was one of the drivers and I didn't know if maybe I was gonna be the one to mess up my team and I didn't want that. But as the games went on, our robot only worked once, and I knew that wasn't enough to get an award. And I know you may be wondering, why are these awards important? Well, these awards can qualify you to go to the next round, which is the state competition, and everybody wants to go to state competition. And so did my team. We really did!

Since this wasn't a good competition for us, we knew that the only chance of an award that would qualify us was the design award. The design award is a combination of your notebook and your interview. Your notebook is your documentation of your process of building your robots, and your interview is basically when one judge or two comes up to you and asks you questions about your team and about your robot. It's important that in the interview everybody talks because if not everybody talks, it won't seem like you worked together as a group. And it's really important that you look like you worked together because they may not know, but you do work together a lot.

And so we really hoped that we would get the design award, but we knew there were so many other great great teams! I'm telling you, we got more and more nervous as they started giving out more and more awards, and we saw so many so many, and I'm telling you a lot of amazing teams! And that's when they started to announce the winner of the design award, and they said 97793A, and that was my team name. And I'm telling you, I was jumping for joy! It was absolutely crazy. I'm telling you if you looked at my face for the first five seconds, I wasn't even moving. I wasn't blinking because I couldn't even understand that this was real. This was actually happening to me. And then I ran up with my team and accepted our award.

Then we got to go to the state competition, which was just an amazing experience, which led us to our next. And there we won another award, which led us to the world competition, and that was such a great experience. It was so amazing to be there, and it all started at this one competition. It all happened at this one competition. And I think that it's so crazy because in robotics, there's a lot of downs, right? But these ups that happen, they make the whole thing worthwhile. And that is why I love robotics, and that's what robotics has taught me.

And I wanted to end with a riddle because it keeps your gears turning and keeps your mind in shape. So I'm gonna say that riddle twice, and I'm gonna say it slow one. You want to know why? Because you might need to write it down. It's a hard riddle. Even I didn't understand it at first!

EPISODE 1 RIDDLE: There are 30 men and two women dressed in uniforms of black or white. They're locked in combat for many hours. The women may be few, but they hold the most power of all of those on the battlefield. Who are these warriors?

And at the beginning of the next episode, I'll tell you the answer to the riddle. If you got it hooray for you, and if you didn't get it, we're on the same step. It took me a while, and maybe you couldn't get it right away. That is okay! I'll give you a new riddle next episode, and I'll tell you the answer to the old one. This is Misha Ahmed your host of ROBOMIND signing off!

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Well, I’m pretty sure I know the answer to the riddle, but I guess I’ll find out next time. This is a cool idea for a podcast.

  2. hey misha! great job on your podcast! i loved listening to your experiences in robotics. you are amazing! i love how you added riddles! it added a great touch to your podcast! you did an amazing job expressing your emotions! you went a long way misha. hopefully you make more robotics memories for many years to come!

  3. hey misha! your podcast is so amazing! i love how you added the riddles. you expressed your emotions during that competition well! you explained the competition nicely. you are so amazing! you have such good sportsmanship. you described the competition in descriptive words. hopefully you make more robotics memories in years to come.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.