A Radicubs member interviewed our founding member, Caitlin Fukumoto, to discuss the benefits of being on a FRC team, and life after being in FIRST.

What have you been up to since leaving robotics and graduating?

I go to MIT and I'm studying urban studies and planning. I haven't done a lot of robotics stuff since I graduated high school, but I learned a lot of soft skills from robotics that I use all the time.

What advice would you give to students who are considering applying to robotics?

It sounds cheesy, but I would encourage students to be themselves and have confidence that they're excited or passionate about doing robotics is sufficient to open that door. Looking back on when I first joined the team that I was a part of before the Radicubs, I was really nervous that I wasn't qualified enough because the application process for that team was pretty intensive. But I was really excited about the opportunity. I think that came across, and I would like to think that that's enough and that other people who are passionate about it will see that. One of the neat parts about FIRST is that you learn so much just by doing it. Nobody expects you to come into it knowing how to build a robot or write a grant but whether you want to be there.

What inspired you to create the team in Frisco?

As I mentioned, I was part of an FRC team at my previous high school in ninth grade, and it was a really cool experience. I felt like I learned a lot and it was such a supportive environment. I felt very grateful to all of the upperclassmen that I had there who taught me so much and welcomed me with open arms. I liked everything about FRC and how it worked. I liked making things, but also just having that community was really important to me. And so I happened to meet Sahil on my first day of school. He was just on the bus asking “Do you want to make a robotics team?” I feel like it's like serendipity but I met him and then it was just something that both of us were really excited about. We liked FRC specifically. I don't know how much of the history lesson you got, but Frisco ISD pushed back on FRC and wanted us to consider something smaller scale, like Vex or something like that. But we really wanted to do FRC in particular just because of how much you learn from that process and how excited we were to build a robot on that scale. I think for me, it was just me having that previous experience and that previous community and then wanting to have something like create something like that in Frisco, both for myself, and that that other people would get to experience as well.

How did being part of the robotics team contribute to your personal and professional development in leadership and other skills?

I think that doing FRC throughout high school shaped me. There are leadership, teamwork, and problem-solving skills to such an extent that I can't imagine or remember how I felt about my strength before FRC. Especially with everything that we had to do to make the Radicubs a community team. I feel like, I essentially had the experience of learning to start a business. We had to learn how nonprofits worked and signed all these things, or if we weren't old enough, other people signed them for us. I think it's hard to answer because it's like it's so big, right? I think I would honestly say that my experience with the Radicubs, really helped any professional skills that I had after the fact. Honestly, I don't think that I've developed much more since then. Everything that I know in terms of how to work on a team, how to deal with challenging situations, how to problem solve, like what fights are important to have, which ones like you just have to compromise. Everything I know is from robotics or I learned something about it from robotics.

Do you have any lasting lessons that you had from being on the team?

I do think I learned a lot about perseverance, I like to think that I'm like a determined person, I think it's natural sometimes when there are too many barriers or things are too hard to just give up and focus your attention on more productive or less upsetting things, It shaped me, the experience of going through something that was such a fight and we did have to persevere and then to have it work out. Also, I love it so much whenever I hear about what the Radicubs are up to nowadays or meet you guys. It's honestly so crazy to me that this thing that seemed so hanging by a thread unstable, like fighting for scraps at the beginning, still exists and is thriving. I also think that I learned a lot about working with other people, identifying what hills I'm going to die on, and what is maybe not so important. To be a good team member, you also have to recognize that. I think another important lesson is that we would have these disagreements, but the reason they seemed so intense or so high stakes was that we all wanted the same thing, which is what we thought was best for the team.

What advice would you give to the current members on the team?

There's something to finding a balance and being able to zoom out and see how robotics fits into the rest of your life. It’s a stepping stone, and you're not going to do robotics forever. What can you get out of the experience while you're there at the same time? I think it's really hard to explain to people outside of FIRST and FRC that like how consuming it is when you're in it, right? There were times, weeks during build season, my junior and senior year when it felt like I was like basically working a full-time job and doing school. And the full-time job was just robotics. I recognize that doesn't make sense to people where they're like, what's the big deal? I think it's really important to care about things and I think that FRC does a really good job of creating a community of people who are passionate about something, and I hope that the current members of the public recognize how special that is to have that opportunity. You can zoom out and be like, it's a high school robotics competition and I'm going to put like write about it in my college apps. But also, I'm going to have a life after this, and then at the same time, it is kind of your life and that's okay. It's really special to care about something that much. One of the things that bugs me the most are people who say ”Nothing’s that big of a deal” I appreciate having things to care about and I hope other people keep that in mind, and that they recognize how special it is to be a part of a community team.