Colin Angle: Learning Something New

(air whooshing) (light music) - I like to think of myself as being sufficiently crazy, to try new things.

(upbeat music) The science that I'm involved with, requires comfort in uncertainty.

It's been a lot of time not knowing exactly what's going to happen and how it could all come together.

And that's cool.

And I scratch the same itch outside of work.

Where I can't wait to try something that I've never done before.

Done wakeboarding, snowboarding, kiteboarding, martial arts, wrestling, and recently started rock climbing.

But when I was learning to shoot archery, the idea sort of repeatedly, trying to hit the center of the target over and over again may have offended my restlessness.

Oops, so I spent a long time trying to, hit the back of another arrow with the first arrow.

(arrow whooshes) Which is hard.

And I never succeeded in that, I kept thinking about, "Rather than trying to hit the center of the target, maybe I could figure out how to knock the target off the stand."

(arrow whooshes) And that seemed like good fun.

So I went through a number of years at summer camp, trying to figure out how to cause as many problems as I could on the archery range.

(upbeat music) It wasn't till the last year where the instructor said, "Angle Colin we've been having fun for a long time.

Why don't you try to hit the center of the target?"

And I found that I actually could.

(arrow whooshes) You can keep giving yourself these experiences of being on a learning curve by trying new things, whether it be snowboarding, canoeing, wakeboarding or designing a new robot.

It's incredibly exciting.

The next frontier for me is dancing.

That's gonna be even more scary.

(light music)