For a while now, I've been thinking that the useful parts of my education fall into three categories: stuff that would be handy on Junkyard Wars, stuff that I can use at cocktail parties, and stuff that will get me on TV.

Matthew, one of our TAs, stood up yesterday and asked if anyone in the class could speak French. CBC/Radio-Canada (aka CBC French) had heard about our robot course and wanted to know if there were any students they could interview on a morning radio show. One guy tried for a while and eventually gave up, so I gave it a shot. They said I was good enough and scheduled a live phone-in interview for this morning.

I left the lab around 1am last night, so I wasn't in great shape this morning. Even so, they seemed to think it was good enough that they called back later to see if they could send a camera crew to interview me for the evening news. Well, if there's a better use for all those years of French immersion, I sure can't think of it.

Sadly, our robot didn't perform nearly as well as it should have and ran off the cliff in the quarter finals. We won the TA's Choice Award for "most reliable robot... in the time trials." It worked fine yesterday during our tests and then again when we ran it for fun after the competition, so at least I know we had a chance. Plus I learned a lot about electro-mechanical design and control. And people at cocktail parties find robots much more interesting than differential equations. And I wound up on radio and TV, thus making this course the best one I've taken.