Afghan student's story comes to the big screen

Welcome to the FIRST Robotics worldwide competition. Afghanistan! My name is Ayda Haydarpour and I'm a computer science major at Virginia Tech, and I was born and raised in Herat, Afghanistan. The name of the movie is Rule Breakers and the movie is about the journey of Afghan Dreamers and Roya Mahboob, which is the founder of the Afghan Dreamers team and how we participated in our first competition as a robotics team. When I got to see the movie, it was really interesting for me because of how they got to show and portray our experience and, like, the kind of things that we've been working on. How do robots make your life better? And it's dangerous to talk about girls doing this kind of thing. It's dangerous not to talk about. I was born and raised in a family of, like, almost all doctors, and they wanted me to do that, as well. And since I did not have any brothers, sometimes my mom or my dad wanted me, or if I'm being honest, I wanted to be a boy back home because I was thinking there are more opportunities for boys compared to girls. And that's why. I had to become a boy. Or, sort of a boy. But fortunately enough, I was in a family that were open minded, and I kind of changed that perspective coming to Virginia Tech and like experiencing a whole new world. Come to me. The movie is kind of combined from different characters. Like, for example, there are four girls in the movie, but actually there were like 12 of us and different team members. But they kind of pulled something from each character and then put them in one, if that makes sense. Teams will be judged on innovation, effectiveness, performance, and also your ability to convince your peers of the importance of your invention. In 2021, when we had to leave my home country, which is Afghanistan, it was a really tough moment for everyone and especially for me because I had to come without my parents and without my family and continue my education, know about different opportunities that are out there for me. And Virginia Tech was one of the options, and I found it so interesting and amazing to be a part of the Virginia Tech community, and I'm happy to be here right now.