24-hour Zoom Marathon
To help team members to keep in contact during COVID-19, one of our mentors, Austin, set up a 24/7 Zoom chat room. After taking advantage of the chatroom late one night, a group of girls was inspired to plan a team bonding event where they took the literal definition of the Zoom room’s 24-hour capabilities to heart. Thus, the Girls of Steel 24-hour Zoom Marathon began.
The rules were simple: at least two people must be on the call at all times. To spice up the event, girls and mentors were encouraged to sign up to lead an activity for an hour.
The event started at 7:00 PM on Friday, March 27th and lasted until 7:00 PM on Saturday. The first hour kicked off with a virtual team dinner and was followed up by a highly requested therapy hour. Our mentor, Mr. Tom Pope presented a slide deck titled Mental Health is a Thing, which featured cute cat photos and helpful advice on taking care of yourself. The next hour was led by Chase, a mentor notorious for talking about his home state of Texas. He gave a presentation titled Space, Texas, Airplanes, Robots, and Taxes, that went well over the allotted time. One girl on the team said, “It was really great to hear about interesting topics like Texas.” Then at 11:00 PM, one of our teammates utilized a slideshow to teach us about the wonders of TikTok. She even taught us the “Cannibal” dance! Once the clock struck midnight we started a game of spicy truth or dare that lasted over 3 hours.
“It was really great to hear about interesting topics like Texas.”
As the sun rose in the morning, our teammate, Aditri, led a very exciting, but slightly terrifying, discussion about Cryptids, Aliens, and World Domination. Afterward, we enjoyed talking casually until the breakfast hour at 9:00 AM. Then we learned about the Ten Craziest FRC Robots from our mechanical mentor and FRC alum, Basel. This was followed by a friendship bracelet making/arts and crafts hour and a pet meet and greet hour, where we introduced our different fuzzy as well as scaly companions. We got to meet dogs, cats, a turtle, and a bearded dragon!
Next, we explored our passion for hot beverages during the sipping tea hour and our affinity for folding paper in origami hour. Afterward, some of our more musically inclined members attempted to form a virtual band! Lag in the Zoom call and a lack of practice made it impossible to play anything in time, however, we still had a lot of fun! We played classic songs, including “Ode to Joy,” “A Whole New World,” “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star,” “Pirates of Caribbean,” and “Happy Birthday” for an audience of 3 mentors. Our mentor, Tim, wanted us to play “Free Bird” but we weren’t talented enough 🙁
Next, our mentor, Danny told us all about submarines! He has first-hand experience working with them, and his talk included a long tangent about torpedoes and a ranking of his all-time favorite submarine movies. Finally, the call ended the same way it started with a goodbye team dinner.
“I got a chance to connect with team members in a way that I wouldn’t normally be able to do during the normal season. It was a really great time and I was glad to get to know my teammates better!”
Overall the event was a huge success! It enabled members to connect with each other without the pressures of build season. One girl said, “I got a chance to connect with team members in a way that I wouldn’t normally be able to do during the normal season. It was a really great time and I was glad to get to know my teammates better!”
NOTE: K-12 Schools can register for unlimited meeting times, otherwise an individual is limited to 40 minutes at a time. https://zoom.us/docs/en-us/school-verification.html
