After months of hard work and countless overtimes in the PVIT room, the robot is finally ready to roll. For years, PVHS senior Aaron Guo has toiled away at perfecting his robot for his next VEX competition.

Guo is a valuable member of the PVHS VEX team and PVIT. He joined the team freshman year, and as a fan of engineering and robotics, VEX was a natural choice for him to express his creative passion and ambition.

“I joined VEX because it was a new team with all freshmen. I knew that I could make an immediate impact on the team because everyone was learning and there weren’t any seniors who would do everything,” Guo said. “It also took me away from the traditional classroom setting… You could take so many different approaches and still end up with a competitive robot.”

Guo’s love for his team runs deep. 

“I loved the hands-on experience that you got from putting pieces together, and you got to see the fruits of your efforts immediately,” Guo explained.

Through hard work and dedication, he brought home a myriad of awards. In his very first year, his team became semi-finalists at the 2018 California State Championship, and they even got to participate in the 2018 World Championships, a distinction few VEX teams have across the nation. In 2019, they achieved honors such as the Excellence Award, Build Award, Skills Champions, and Design Award. In 2020, they continued to excel, becoming the finalists at the 2020 California State Championship and once again qualified for the World Championship.

Although he started out as a builder and a designer, in his sophomore year, he took on the role of a programmer, eventually becoming the lead coder in his sophomore year. Despite having a rigorous job as a programmer on his team, he still performs other tasks, such as building.

Years of trial and error taught Guo valuable lessons, such as teamwork and leadership. He recalls that the engineering notebook served as a priceless experience.

“When we tried to write something down in the engineering notebook, we ran into a ton of challenges,” he said. “It was tough having to organize who would write what pages and when they would write it since everyone was already busy working on the robot. Writing wasn’t the most fun thing to do either…”

Nevertheless, he learned a good takeaway from the situation.

As a senior about to graduate in a year, he does have some wishes for the impact of his legacy at PVHS.

“My biggest hope is that the VEX program will continue to exist after my friends and I leave,” Guo said. “We were the ones to create it, but I hope it will have gained enough traction so that other students can get the valuable experience I got from the competition.”