We Made It On TV!

A big portion of FTC Robotics' goal is to have their teams outreach to the community that they are apart of. Today, as a team, we were able to reach out to our community that could impact many of the older people in our community. Wednesday, March 29th was our big TV debut. Now, we understand that being on the local TV station isn't a huge deal to many, but to us, it is. Being a rookie team, it is hard to get going in the right direction. We haven't done much yet, ad beside the fact that we're girls in the heavily populated male field called robotics, we don't have a ton to celebrate right off the bat. By saying this, I don't mean that we're not already a great team, because don't get me wrong, we are. Just we haven't won too often, and we cannot yet be celebrated for our wins. So today was a huge step in the right direction for us! Our TV experience was quite exciting for us. The show is available to watch on youtube, if you would like to see, you can go to this link.

Our team and Erin from the Ladybots on top of a PCTV car.

Behind the scenes on PCTV

Here's a little on how the whole thing went:
First, we all woke up bright and early in the morning so we would be at the PCTV studios at 7 a.m. Micaela and I (Kristina) arrived first. We were pleasantly greeted by the lady that would be interviewing us. Micaela and I sat down and immediately started to post all over Snapchat and Instagram about being at PCTV. We posted on our team Instagram that everyone can go follow(@ultimum_dominarum). Next, the other all girls team started putting on their microphones. They are called the Ladybots, and are one of the other 2 all girls Utah FTC robotics teams. They went in first to be interviewed. After sitting nervously for about 10 minutes, it was finally our turn. We were given microphones. We put them on and were ready to go. We went in and sat down on the couch. The anchor talked to us before we went on air. After, we all went out side and took pictures on top of the PCTV news car. Finally, we had to go back to school. 
We learned a bit from this experience. I think that things are beginning to change on how people look at robotics. During the whole experienced, we were being looked up to as girls in robotics. When we got to school I noticed that people thought it was really cool we were doing something like this. A teacher stopped to talk to us and told us how important it was to keep going. He told us that if we keep doing robotics, then other kids are going to start getting the message. The message is that robotics isn't just for nerds who have nothing better to do, but it is for everyone of all genders who want to invest in their future and come out of the program brighter and more experienced than others.