The next day Aditya got ready earlier than his friends and left to the campus.

He directly went to the SAE shed which was already open. Manasa is not the only one present. There are some third-year students who are also there.

Some are discussing something and others are making calls.

“You finally came. Thank you. Let’s go. We can talk over breakfast. I am buying.”

Aditya already finished his breakfast at the hostel, but he didn’t bother rejecting it. Now, his body is like a black hole, he can eat a lot.

They went to the cafeteria and there are a lot more breakfast choices there than in the dorm. With that day being the special day, they have some special dishes too.

They sat at the table and Aditya asked.

“So, what is this thing about the Metal art?”

“Well, the SAE shed needs a lot of funding. Even though the club members assigned to different projects were asked to pool some money on their own for their vehicles and the college gives some funding based on the previous results, it is not enough.

Even the funding from the sponsors, in fact even getting the sponsors is very rare, so we need to find ways to increase the funding of the club by any possible means.

So, apart from the regular competitions related to SAE, ISIE, and other automobile club competitions held in the universities, we participate in other competitions as well.”

“Like?”

“We team up with the robotic club for some competitions, such as the CAD competitions, design competitions, and competitions related to engine assembly and dismantling.

There are always some competitions that are conducted every year. So, the third-year students who are always the team leaders will be taking some competitions to themselves and guide the juniors given to them to win this thing.

But now that I am here as the wildcard, a sophomore joining the third years in taking up a sub-team, they are kind of trying to give me a hard time.”

“They don’t like you.”

“Not all of them, but some. They are feeling threatened. After all, SAE sub-team members have some really good reputation in the department, it has been a decade since a second-year student took up a position like this.”

“Okay, but you still didn’t get to the point.”

“Well, the thing is, there would always be two joint leaders for every team and sub-team and there are two ways for them to be team leaders.”

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“Can I stop you there for a second?”

“What?”

“Since the start, everybody is yapping about the team leader, sub-team leader, and such. Can you explain it to me a bit?”

“You don’t know?”

“I was not obsessed with the club before I joined.”

She shrugged and explained.

“There are basically five kinds of vehicle competitions. The main one is M-baja conducted by SAE, which makes a normal automobile run on fuel. The second one is the E-Baja, which is the electric vehicle challenge. Both of them are related to offroad vehicles.

The third one is a go-kart, the fourth one is a quad bike and fifth one is a hybrid vehicle challenge conducted by ISIE.

Now there would be five team leaders whom we call captains. They are in charge of managing the team.

Currently, there are two joint captains for every team. Once the application process for the competitions opens, we will check which captain got more funding until then and make him the sole captain and the other guy becomes the vice-captain.

These ten are the most skilled third-year students in the club.

Now comes the sub team leaders. For every vehicle there would be different systems. Suspension, transmission, brakes, steering and structural design. For each system there would be one team.

Of course, for Go-kart the suspension is not required, so there would be one less team.

Currently, in M-Baja which I am part of, there are two leaders for every subteam, except the structural design and the suspension. Those two are taken by the two joint captains and there is no competition for them. But I took the transmission, which I am the joint sub-team leader of.

I have to compete for the spot of the sub team leader with another third year student and there are two categories we need to compete with.

The first category is that we need to create a design concept for the transmission, whoever has the better transmission design, even if it is a bit conceptual wins and the second category is obviously funding.

Whoever gets more money through winning the competitions will win in that category.

But these third-year students ganged up and sorted all kinds of good competitions most of which are regular to that guy. I am now stuck with some stupid competitions and for some reason one of them is next month.”

“Is this where the metal art comes in?”

“Yes.

Metal art has become a bit popular nowadays. Apart from that, one of our alumni is really into it and he also happened to make a lot of money. He decided to create a chain of competitions regarding this.

In different places and different concepts. It is almost like he alone wants to popularize the whole metal art thing in the state in just one year.

The worst part is that he has some solid sponsors who are on board with this idea and the competition prizes are extremely high.”

“So, you are dumped with this and you are asking me to be in that dump with you?”

“Yes, kind of.

But not for nothing. Basically in the teams and sub teams only the third years will be the team leaders and the second year students like me would be the direct team members. The first years will be like interns, they would be working on different teams doing a lot of physical and menial work under the direction of the team members.

In this process, any particular team member might like you and take you in for the next year when you are completely eligible for the team.

But your perfect score is something that comes rarely.

There are always three empty spots left in every team and there would be some second years that are not picked for the teams directly.

You can compete for that spot with them and if you help in these competitions, I will back you up for that position as long as your scores are not too far away. With your grasp over theory, you would be able to easily cross the other candidates which will even cover the losing points due to lack of work experience.

Please, help me out with this.”