Well it didn’t get between me and a girlfriend, but the last FSAE car I worked on ruined a lot of friendships. The Senior class designing it went horribly and most of those guys up and quit after the class wrapped up mostly do to a jackass of a professor, though towards the end of the class I was pretty hard on people who I didn’t feel were pulling their own weight (considering how much of the car had to be redone after that class, I feel I was justified, though I could have been WAY more diplomatic about it).

The rest of the year went OK, but after graduation, we had 3 weeks or so to get the car finished and ready for competition. By this point, my GPA had dropped by 20%, and I had flushed two minors down the toilet so I could put in more shop hours: I REFUSED to let anything come between me and competition. The stress and long hours got to me and I turned into an awful SOB. Short tempered, critical of other people’s work, and bitching about everything. By the end of that month (and probably much earlier actually), any patience people had for me was gone and while in my deluded mind things were fine, the truth was I was a pariah. We did get the car finished and brought to competition, where it fell on its face, running into all sorts of reliability problems that never appeared in 2 months of testing. It was a nightmare. I can’t even begin to describe how gutting it was when the car refused to start for the second Enduro stint.

The weekend after we got back from competition, the team went to a local autocross and didn’t even ask if I wanted to go. I found out about it on Facebook later. It’s been 2 years and most of them still don’t speak to me. I don’t blame them though, I was a piece of shit, taking out my frustrations on people who didn’t deserve it. I eventually went to a therapist to deal with the pent up emotion. It was one of the best decisions I ever made, as she was both able to help get me over the disappointment and frustration of that season, as well as equip myself to handle stressful situations. I’ve never been a very social person, but I’m much better at realizing when I’m being a jackass. I’ve been slowly reaching out to my former teammates to try and mend bridges. It’s not easy and it really hurts when I think back to how close I was to some of those people.

TLDR: It’s just a stupid fucking car. Don’t get worked up over it. Cars don’t care if you call them lazy, but people sure do.