Building things has played a major role in my life. But it all started with Legos. At this point, I assume you are thinking “As a kid, he probably loved playing with legos and loved to build new things.” That is very wrong, I hated legos as a kid. The stereotypical lego brick that is the likely a role the everyone’s childhood and even a modern-day “meme” was the bane of my existence. From the age of three to about eleven my parents had a successful online store where they bought Lego NXT kits for low prices and then parted the kits out to make a profit. As a result, my house was filled to the brim with various Lego sets and semi-parted out NXT kits. Despite the fact I had nearly unlimited access to Lego bricks I often refused to play with them and allowed them to collect dust under my bed. The only time I would take them out was to entertain friends who loved them. I have a clear memory from 4th grade where after school my friend came to my house and I watched him have more fun with the lego set then I’d ever had. I was amazed at how he could care so much for something that I saw as an annoyance. Eventually, I called to him and asked to play outside, I had grown bored of watching him play and wanted to have fun, he grudgingly responded only to be polite.*
As time passed I spent less and less time even thinking about legos, on the rare occasion my parents would enlist my help to help sort and count a new set and prepare it for resale but that was my extent of my interactions with Legos. I did not stop building things, rather I was driven even more so as I distanced myself from Legos. I spent over 3 months designing and perfecting paper guns out of paper (This was during the height of my DIY faze in Youtube as seen in the previous blog post). Only when I entered middle school did I start to show a slight interest in Lego's again. Lego has released a new NXT set and I discovered that my middle school had a team that competed with the kits, I was ecstatic. I was happy to find a purpose to my building, I hated having to imagine a purpose for my simple buildings and this competition allowed me to fully devote my time to trying to win. I discovered that if I wanted to be passionate at something I needed something stable to drive me, I would get bored with my imagination, in middle school my competitive spirit gave me that drive. Even now doing Highschool robotics I find that the competition often forces me to persevere even when I want to give up.
(* edited to finalize my thought)
As time passed I spent less and less time even thinking about legos, on the rare occasion my parents would enlist my help to help sort and count a new set and prepare it for resale but that was my extent of my interactions with Legos. I did not stop building things, rather I was driven even more so as I distanced myself from Legos. I spent over 3 months designing and perfecting paper guns out of paper (This was during the height of my DIY faze in Youtube as seen in the previous blog post). Only when I entered middle school did I start to show a slight interest in Lego's again. Lego has released a new NXT set and I discovered that my middle school had a team that competed with the kits, I was ecstatic. I was happy to find a purpose to my building, I hated having to imagine a purpose for my simple buildings and this competition allowed me to fully devote my time to trying to win. I discovered that if I wanted to be passionate at something I needed something stable to drive me, I would get bored with my imagination, in middle school my competitive spirit gave me that drive. Even now doing Highschool robotics I find that the competition often forces me to persevere even when I want to give up.
(* edited to finalize my thought)
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See, this is surprising, I thought you were a real handyman, so it seems like a hands-on building toy like Legos would be right up your alley. I'm assuming your parents didn't buy any of those thematic sets, because those were dope. Building them wasn't anything cool, the rules were pretty straightforward so there was little room for creativity. However, the fact that you could have your own little Harry Potter, Star Wars, or Lord of the Rings universe was awesome. You should check those out they're super cool
ReplyDeleteI remember my parents always bought me new lego sets. Whether it would be Indiana Jones, Star Wars etc. I would love to mix and match them. I find it interesting that someone who hated lego as a kid would be someone who's doing Ctrl-Z, but I guess people change. Would you play with lego's now?
ReplyDeletei'm really surprised by this blog post, especially because I feel like you're always building things and you really like it, but it didn't start with legos !? also honestly i think NXTs are a little lame so im not as surprised by that, even though you do robotics now
ReplyDeleteAs stated above by my peers, this caught me off guard. I too thought that you seemed like the kid who was always playing with his legos. I'm with Umar on this one though - I think that if you had some thematic sets, like star wars or lord of the rings, you would have too been wooed by the ability to create things straight out of movies and books. I think that's the best part about legos - you can create something so intricate and imaginitive out of something so simple.
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