John Bobbitt III and IV: a legacy in mechanical engineering

I'm John Bobbitt, or John Thomas Bobbitt with the fourth. John Thomas Bobbitt the third. I go by John. I grew up working on cars, just like Grandpa and dad. Growing up with my dad in his interest in cars, I was always working on cars, always in the garage, working on things around the house. One thing I always knew I was going to get into was mechanical engineering. In second grade, I told my teacher that I wanted to be a mechanical engineer, at Virginia Tech, and on the Formula SAE team. Of course in second grade, my teacher laughed at me. But miss Virgo, I'm here. Came down here in my freshman year, took the classes. That was actually Virginia Tech's first year with the Formula SAE team. I didn't know it existed. And over the summer, between my freshman and sophomore years, Auto week magazine ran an article about formula SAE, and there was a sidebar about Virginia Tech's team. I had no idea there was a team here. So I got back to campus as soon as I could in the fall and wandered the halls of Randolph, looking for the race car. And I found the team. I walked in, I said, How do I join the team? And they handed me an angle grinder and said, you're on the team. So I was a member of the team for three years. My junior year, we had some misfortune, but then my senior year, we came back with one car, and we won the championship. I've been mentoring the Virginia Tech formula SA team for 20 years. I come back as often as I can. I'm on campus at least ten times a year to visit the team and just mentor them. It's great to see their ideas and where they're going. I learned so much extra by being part of the team and experience both from the friendship side, but equally importantly from the engineering experience side, right? So you come out of college with just a much better fundamental, much better basis for the future.