March March, March to... School

Hello, first month of Spring. The team is enjoying dead week at school, as are many of Central Oregon's students. We have fantastic plans ahead.



We went ahead and mapped out all the middle and high schools here in the CO. Turns out there are a lot of em. 46, to be precise. After consulting with the Joulerbears, they asked if they could be the first ones to invite certain schools to start teams. After that, our list was down to about 30 schools.

After some viciously fast typing for 1700+ word emails, Sisters Christian Academy, the local private school of geniuses, agreed to let our team present to the students. Instead of directly sponsoring, or even affiliating with the proposed team, the school wants to put all the responsibility on the students. They will be responsible for funding, ordering parts, running the biz. And because of it, these ambitious students will be intensely learned. Only one class will be actual high-schoolers by the time the season starts. 7th and 8th graders will be the majority of the team, which is OK, considering these students are far above their grade level. Heck, there are two of 'em on this very team.

Sisters High School is our next target. So far they've not replied at all. We'll be persistent, while not being annoying, and hopefully another team will dawn in Sisters.

Our team's engineering notebook is already becoming quite full. We renamed it the Team Journal, as we're doing much more than just engineering.

Next up is our own invention work. In the next several meetings, we'll be turning our ideas into reality. Personally, I know I'll be throwing a lot of energy efficiency, aviation, and EE/Compsci stuff out there. Knowing this team, though, our meeting room will quickly become a warroom. Instead of delicious computer displays, there will be whiteboards and cork boards everywhere, filled with lists of ideas, methods of doing everything from going to Mars to using biological proteins for other things than they were originally meant. Laptops will be displaying URLs of research and information. Meticulous thoughts for the future of our organization will be written out in notebooks scattered across tables. Several robot parts will be broken from overuse, and yes yes, indeed we will discuss becoming an interstate team– Planting teams in California as well as Oregon, and bonding everyone together quite nicely as a beautiful alliance.

You can see why we look so tired all the time.

Member recruitment time is now, as well. We'll not only be persuading people to start their own teams, we'll be recruiting some for ourselves as well. The more minds, the more exponential the ideas will be. It's not going to help us tackle all we put in front of us, it's just going to put more in front of us. Yes, it's working to full potential, yes, we are crazy. It's our name, remember?

That's it for now.

Nate, out.