Finding your voice

          From the second you enter the doors of my high school you feel instantly small. Physically and mentally. It is a largely known misconception that freshmen should not know anything or have any good ideas. This is simply not true. Everyone, from freshmen to seniors fear being wrong or made fun of. It is the simple fact of high school life. Teenagers can be mean and backstabbing. However, trust me when I say this, if you always voice your ideas and opinions they will be correct or good at least one percent of the time, and people will respect you more and more for them. The gratification of being appreciated for just a second is much better than the pain of holding your tongue for an eternity. One particular example in my life came up today as I attended a robotics brainstorming session. During the session we shared ideas for the design of our 2016 robot that will compete in this year's First Robotics game challenge. The game for this year is titled stronghold. It consists of two towers and two walls of various obstacles. In order to gain points (which go towards your team's record) the robot must either cross defenses which include drawbridges, portcullises, bumpy terrain, ramparts, moats, and the brick wall, or throw large dodge balls into windows in the tower. At the end of the game, the robot may scale the tower to a certain height to gain even more points. During the brainstorming session, I was in a group with several freshmen and a few seniors (one of which was a team captain). Together we designed a robot along the parameters. Our mentor asked us to defend a certain aspect of the robot. We all looked to the team captain in our group, he said nothing as if he was frozen to his seat and his mouth lost the function to open. I raised my hand. If you didn't realize before, I am a freshman. Our mentor smiled and posted towards me. I found the courage to speak confidently about why we chose what we did in front of forty students. Afterwards, our mentor complimented me for what I said, and I felt deep pride and gratification. Overcoming your own fear is one of the hardest and most rewarding things you can do as a student. Sometimes you may feel like as an underclassman you are oppressed by the social stigma that you are supposed to know nothing. Trust me, you will be respected for voicing your opinion and ideas.