RAYMO’S RAMBLINGS-INTELLIGENT TEENAGERS VS ME

Interview on Q92 with the LQPV Robotic Team

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Well I’m a 59-year-old middle aged man, and I like to think of myself as having average intelligence, I’m not the smartest or even close to that, but yet I can add two plus two without any problem and think the light bulb burns bright at times.

 The last few years I have spent some time interviewing the LQPV Robotics Team before they head out for the state robotic competition in the cities. And after visiting with them and listening to them use words I’ve never heard of, talking about a programmable logical controller, or an actuator, a magnetic detector, modules, transducer, or a degree of freedom and drop delivery terms, my head is spinning and I have no idea what they are talking about. And you can tell listening to the interview I don’t know what I’m talking about during the whole interview I did with them this past week.

You know I’ve interviewed Senator Amy Klobuchar a couple of times and sounded like I knew what was happening in Washington when interviewing her and I’ve talked to the President of the Cattlemen’s Association in Minnesota, knowing nothing about cattle or farming for that matter and can usually fake my way through those interviews and sound somewhat intelligent asking questions.

 But the robotic team is another story, I can’t fake my way through that interview. My stupidity comes out loud and clear with them.

 I look down at the roster of names and grades of these very intelligent and future engineers I’m sure, they are in 9th, 10th, and 11th grade!   Boys and girls, from all different backgrounds. I just shake my head when talking to them at their intelligence, so proud of all of them.

I was a C and D student in high school, all I cared about was sports and girls in high school, I don’t think I ever took a book home to study. How sad as I just typed that. At Alex Tech and Community College things changed for me, I was very interested in what I was studying and I cared, so I pulled off straight A’s in college. See I do have intelligence and I even was voted Outstanding Student at graduation.

So when I see young kids in high school doing so well in the classroom and doing so good at something they love to do, like building a very complicated robot, whom they named Murphy by the way, it makes me smile and I feel good about the world.

These robotic students are very smart and very impressive teenagers. So the next time I spend some time with them and interview them maybe I won’t be so hard on myself and think I’m an old 59-year-old guy that doesn’t know squat about robotics, I’m sure they will take some time to educate me about what they are doing.

 I should have bragged about myself and told all of them “hey I bet you didn’t know I pulled straight A’s in college”

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