I’ve never understood the phrase
“rubbing shoulders”. It’s one of those idioms peculiar to English that doesn’t
make the least amount of sense if you think about it literally.
Today (being November 8th)
I figured it out.
It means that you're working with
or around someone, usually in tight quarters. If you're both working at the
same table, then the chance that your shoulders, elbows, knees and feet will interact
in one way or another is better than good.
Here’s why this is coming up: I
spent the day at the School of the Arts in downtown Tacoma, doing a workshop
with a whole bunch of other people. We were in some tight quarters at times.
I spent the first two hours of
the workshop with an Autodesk employee, working with their product Inventor.
The guy’s name was Andy something; if someone out there has a last name for
him, please message me on my Google+ page :) His computer wasn't working, so we
switched computers. Once he got used to the smaller monitor, things worked
fine.
I spent lunch rubbing shoulders
with my teammates, the only people there that I actually knew prior to
arriving.
Afterwards, I spent an hour in a
panel discussion between two Bear Metal mentors, a referee and a SOTAbots
mentor (shut up, spell check). The topic: strategy. Well worth the time; it was
intense, but that’s how like some things. Specifically, I prefer my candy, tea,
dark chocolate, white chocolate, hot chocolate, any chocolate, information,
computer programs, schedules, friends, and music intense (usually).
During that hour, I was sitting
next to SOTAbots’ backup robot driver.
A note about SOTAbots: these
guys are good. They have the skillset of some of the best teams in Washington
State, and they bring home enough hardware to prove it. If FRC teams were
rocket companies, then SOTAbots would be Virgin Galactic: still kind of the new
kids on the block, but incredibly good at what they do.
My last hour was boring. I’m not
talking about it here, except for this: it was good information, but nothing
catastrophic or extraordinary happened. The one exception was the person
sitting next to me; her hair was bright pink.
It was interesting to be there;
it gave me a good reality check. It was a shift from the “let’s get a robot on
the field, and then if we have time we can talk about strategy” mentality to a
“let’s figure out our strategy and do our planning, and then we can start
designing” mentality. Strategy is pivotal to having a successful team.
It was also a time for me to
look back and see how far we’ve come as a team. When I walked in on my first
day (January 5th, 2014) our idea of creating a part out of metal was
to print a to-scale drawing of the original computer model, tape the drawing to
a hunk of metal and then drill and cut through both. We now have a machine that
does that for us, and only makes a mistake when we do (theoretically).
We’re a robotics team; we don’t
think in terms of could and if.
We think in terms of how and
when.
