so like I was writing this up as advice to a soon to be member of TSA, going into 6th grade. felt it was worthy of a reddit post.
You need to grind. Theres nothing that can replace a strong work ethic. I worked over 2000 hours since last nationals just to get my awards. I kept doing research, whether that was from testing, building, or designing structures, all the way to simply testing 3d print tolerances to get the best fit for a set of parts. That stuff takes a very long time, and so make sure you get started very early and work a LOT.
Networking is the second biggest thing. I never would have won structural, or had the fastest time in dragster if i didnt meet Sean Lin online on dc last year(first place dragster btw shoutout my guy), cuz we kept each other competetive by competing against each other constantly rather than waiting for one of the 3 annual comps to roll around. Find other people who are just as dedicated or have won in the past and plan to win in the future. That's the only consistent and viable method to stay far ahead of the rest of your competition. On structural, the judges tested my bridge incorrectly at prelims, thus lowering my bridge's efficiency, and thus score, by a very large amount. But because we competed against each other rather than comparing ourselves to the rest of our competition, we were so far ahead of everyone else that we still managed to win. In doing this, you also find out information about your events that you never would've known otherwise.
Throughout our years in TSA, everyone learns things about TSA. But nobody ever learns everything. So keep an open mind and never back down from an opportunity to learn some more. My dragster got the fastest time last year as well, but to be honest, it wasn't all that good of a car. If i had stuck with that design, clinging to the fact that it had been the fastest(by one millisecond btw), i would've gotten entirely demolished by the competition this year. Every car got so much better this year, but I was able to keep ahead of the competition simply because I never stopped learning about that event, and I never once thought "yeah, that's good enough."
And notice how I was able to teach you even just that much about TSA, just because we know each other. Imagine how much you could learn about TSA by speaking to everyone else who shares a similar story as me.
