It's January of 2023, and my 18-year-old self is looking for a new challenge to end his time in high school on a high. After a 2022 that can be best described as unusual and confusing, I wanted to make the most of my last semester.

Enter my school's FIRST Robotics Competition team, Imperator. A friend of mine was on the team since the previous season, and had insisted throughout that whole year on me joining him there. I bit the bullet after coming back from winter break not knowing what to expect. My friend handed me contact information to the team's coach and told me to send them a message to ask to join. After a brief pair of conversations and some very light paperwork, I was officially a FIRST student.

I originally entered the CAD and mechanical design subteam: I ran Windows through Bootcamp on my old 2015 MacBook Pro and installed SolidWorks to get started in my first meet with the subteam. My dual-core laptop did not take it well at all, and I left that meet feeling somewhat unsettled.

The FRC season gives teams an unbelievably short timeframe to get ready for competition: in just six weeks, they analyze that year's game rules (yes, they change yearly!), lay out their robot's core components and characteristics, design every part, manufacture said parts, assemble the robot, write all the code needed to bring it all together and finally let the robot's drivers practice as much as they can. CAD design seemed like a monumental learning curve to take on in just six weeks, and the team had one huge gap in their activities elsewhere: they had no media subteam.

Media subteams are critical for these teams, as they document, share, and express the team's activities and positive community impact (a cornerstone of FIRST) to the world, and my team didn't have one.

My family had an old Canon camera.

I taught myself how to use Photoshop and DaVinci Resolve during the previous two years for school projects.

My older sister was majoring in cinema, so she taught me the basics of using a professional camera.

The 2023 season would be the first (and as of today, only) time a regional FRC competition would be hosted by my high school.

You can see where this is going.

I talked to the team's coaches and switched subteams, essentially restarting the media subteam ahead of the season starting proper and leading the rebranding project that would ultimately kick off my design career.

Come mid-March and I stepped onto the competition field for the first time, camera in hand. Over the course of the following hours, days, weeks and months, my work as the team’s photographer and media head helped me find one of two passions that drive me every day: the passion to tell stories.

For over a year, I had the immense pleasure of doing just that, focusing my efforts in making sure that same spark lit up in my small group of subteam students.

This time on the team kicked off my design career, as I immersed myself in a world of creators, change makers and forward-thinking individuals who weren't quite satisfied with how the things around them were, and weren't afraid of putting their hands to work.

In the year and a half since I left the team, I've continued to participate in the FIRST community as an event volunteer; as a team queuer, field crew member and event photographer (and even as a content creator for a large FIRST YouTube channel!), even after moving to a new city to keep pursuing my design education, an education that a friend in another team helped me choose.

Now, after settling in to my new city and daily life, I'm looking ahead to the 2026 season and beyond as a mentor for a new team: looking to continue impacting students and enriching my own skills and worldview, thanks to a far-reaching community of some of the brightest creative and technical minds in the world.