by Meghna Chityala ’21

It was robotics season, and it was not an exaggeration to say that the entire team was working overtime to finish our 120-lb. robot by the deadline. There was never a moment of silence, even upstairs on the programming subteam. We covered all of the whiteboards available to us with math and sequences of code — a wonderful explosion of red, green, and blue marker — but ran out of space. We had to map out the motors and subsystems of our robot to see how everything worked in tandem with each other, or the code would be disorganized. 

Here’s where the windows come in: Mr. Meredith, our robotics mentor, took one of the blue dry-erase markers and began to list all of the motors onto the windows overlooking the machinery. I speak for all of us when I say it was shocking, especially for a teacher, to initiate this unconventional method of collaboration. He looked at us confused, as if it were normal to use the windows as makeshift whiteboards for problem-solving. One by one, we started to gravitate towards the windows and draw out our plans for the robot.

In the end, it was not that surprising to use the windows, as our team is founded off the basis of creativity and bold ideas. It was definitely one of the more weird and exciting times of my Peddie experience, and I never look at windows the same way!