What makes you interested?
 

HEY Everyone!!! :D

Just wanted to know what makes you interested in FIRST. :confused:

Building a robot, of course. And a big one that could easily tear me into little pieces if the AI went out of control.



(fun sidenote: At our school, our weekly newspaper is entitled the "Prep News." But there is an underground student run joke newspaper called the Insider . . . and the Insider ran an article in which our robot, then under the working name "Six Doller Burger" went on a rampage and killed us all, because a cell phone activated the "Destroy" "maim" and "kill mercilessly" commands in our AI. oops.)

Originally, I came in for the PR. But I was sucked into the entire robot building (esp. electrical). Then my second year, I (with the help of this forum) began meeting people on other teams. Most of my best friends are from FIRST. And as much as I like building the robots, the people and the whole FIRST atmosphere are what keep me coming back.

I think what makes me interested in FIRST is the chance to meet new people and do something beyond the regular school studies.

Good Luck To Everyone at the invatationals.

what MADE me interested in first was an older brother who was always coming home late while i was still in middleschool , and i used to think lucky bastard, always gets to show up whenever he wants


i keep coming back be cause i like learnding stuff.... drrrr

The building, tie-dyeing shirts all day, wearing a huge tie-dye afro wig, the late nights in the hotels, the bus/plane rides, the pictures, THE BUTTONS!!!, and god I could go on all night...

I think what makes everyone stay interested is the FUN that you have.

You know its that when you spend you're math class figuring out how to get the biggest score and most QP's.

Good Luck to everyone at their invitationals

Click Here To E-mail me

I know I did that many times during build season. The scary part is most of it was actually relevant to what we were doing in math :yikes:. Thank god for Algebra 2 with all the parabolas and linear programming. Too bad I couldn't convince my teacher to give me extra credit for it. Her response when I explained the role of algebra in Stack Attack: "See, it is useful in real life" :rolleyes:

I originally came in because my sister was on it, and she loved it. She convinced me to join, and I ended up joining the chairman's group b/c of the people on it. I ended up having sooooooooo much fun b/c of it!! I ended up learining how to film videos (well), take good pictures, and in general, having a great time with a group of kids that I never would have thought that I would fit in with in a million years. Guess life surprises you sometimes, huh? ;)

Whats fuuny, is when we practiced, I knew more about the game scoring then the whole team (at least in my own opinion). What is interesting after watching all the matches, is that you see teams that don't have any math class dreamers. LOL

Good Luck to everyone at invatationals

The people.

And the worst part is they weren’t at much of a disadvantage. The problem with math class dreaming(or at least mine) is that it can’t predict how others will play the game. Its easy to imagine 22 stacks(I swear it could’ve happened!) and all four bots sitting nicely on the top, but in real life we hardly ever saw stacks bigger than 4. So my revelation that having all the boxes on your side can be good isn’t so important. Oh well, it was still fun :).

Learning, "expanding my horizons," so to speak...spending all day every day for 6 weeks building a robot, the other people involved, falling in love with the people on your team, playing cards all night in the hotel room, the excitement of competitions, there's so much stuff...it's just plain fun...

See, I have got way to much time on my hands, I have more then 200 pages of drawings. I thought of every possibility. That was my little "pass time", studying strategy. I also sometimes refer to myself as king of the stack. I can build an 8 stack perfectly every time. (Never got to do it at comp. tho) Although it would be cool if someone did. Maybe at the invitational.

I just did the systematic thing and checked each situation for the score when you have 23 boxes on your side and 22 on the other and 45 on yours and none on the other(the two points from the linear programming triangle of fun). At first I just tested it with the optimal stack(half the boxes, from the formula for the highest point of a parabola), but then someone pointed out that 22 stacks aren’t going to happen often(ever) so I tested it with any height stack.

I think it’d be awesome if we arranged for a nice 22 stack at one of the off season competitions. Maybe MOE could do it at Duel on the Delaware(when they’re partnered with us of course :D). A score of 656 would be so amazing.. I’d cry from happiness :)

I would just like to see a stack, how many time (almost all) did you see no stacks at all at the end.

Anything over 10 would be nice.

Originally I didn't want to do FIRST because it was time consuming( that lasted all of 2 weeks in our rookie year). After that the thrill of the competition made me come back in 2002, and the people that I meet assured me of coming back in 2003. Next year as a bio major* I'll be looking for an engineering outlet so looks like FIRST in 2004..... now to find a team in to UMD area...... anyone need help?

*biology was my first love in the science field and i have chosen to pursue it in college

What makes me coming back is the imagination and creativity man. If you can come up with some crazy ideas then you belong in FIRST. The beauty is that you can actually accomplish those crazy ideas. No task seems to be too big. Whether you are building the robot, at a competition, or partying in the hotel room, your imagination can go wild. I usually make it a challenge for myself to find somethign crazy to do. Latest idea: FIRST tattoo.

I agree, one of my favorite things to do is to find a new idea on a great giveaway. This year I took a few yo-yo's and changed them to team 71 yo's. It was hard, but to see the look of the people you traded with, makes it all worth it.

Good Luck To everyone at the invitationals.

What keeps me coming ack is the sense of community that FIRST gives people. My friends and I spent a single day at the LA regioanl and had made at least 40 new friends. The fact that we were all against each other had nothing to do with it. FIRST is a place that I can act crazy and have fun without being looked down on because everyone is crazy and psycho. I love that.

Oh man, that is so true!!

Ditto to that sista!! :p In FIRST i can actually be myself without worrying about being judged by others... it's a woncerful feeling.

Seriously though! If I'm at school and am acting the way I would at a competition, I can just tell that everyone around me thinks I'm a freakin' idiot! That would never happen if I was with the team, or anyone else involved in FIRST...They'd more than likely join me in my crazyness!

I know the feeling.

Normally, I'm pretty quiet and secluded, but robotics helps that. Having a pleasant conversation with a judge, talking with other teams at socials, making friends (to Dave from 1115, I still have your sign, heh), and having fun. This is why I love robotics so much.

Meh in my school the crazyness follows you robotics or no robotics. I can tell you stories about what the honor students have done in my classes but then again I do not feel like getting banned any time soon.

Well, this is the way I look at it..

The people at my school are mean and they are very... shall we say... stuck up... and if you are not as stuck up as them then you don't fit in. But with my Robotics team, we have so much fun and we become so close that it doesn't matter.

I mean, when I died my hair yellow for competition, all the people in my school were asking me why I did it, and when I told them that it was for Robotics they kinda gave me a "what in the world is robotics" look and walked away.

But when we got to nationals I was dying people's hair in the hallway of the hotel room at 11:30 at night, and at the regionals I was painting the faces of people that were on different teams.

I mean, where else could you do that? Certainly not where I come from...

I come from a rather stuck up place as well. Robotics is the only place I've gone where I actually liked every person there because they're nice, fun, open people. It just doesn't get any better than robotics.

what makes you interested ?
 

Well my dad got me hooked on FIRST. When i was 12 i went to my first robotics competition, I was fascinated by the people. It was almost overwhelming to see so much team spirit.
This year was my first year to be an actual member of our team, and it has given me so much. I got to meet so many really great people that have taught me not only how to build a robot, but how to live life. I have have learned how to become responsible and to be myself. I got to build a robot and learn how to machine parts. Now, machining to me is like potato chips, once you start you can't stop:D. It was amazing building our robot and seeing all of the parts come together to form a machine. At the regionals i met a countless number of people. It was great watching the robot that i had spent over 200 hours building go out and compete. this sounds mushy but its true FIRST has opened my eyes to the world of engineering, it has truly inspired me. I can't even imagine my life without being involved in FIRST or mentoring and helping others in some way. FIRST goes beyond building robots, it penetrates the lives of those who are involved in it

krystine
:P aka: kry-stine throw-a-man

There's a calm ">>Normal<<" me, and then there's a robotics me, where I can be yelling "ROBOTS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" and generally looking like an idiot with non-robotics people. True, I'm nto the one who does it the most *coughlaurencough*. But it's one reason why robotics rocks so much. There's other competitions, but there arent' any where there's so much inter-team co-mingling. Also I get to mess with the mill and the lathe, you can't ever resist that. Oooh the joys of milling aluminum and lathing brass... the pain of lathing steel, ack, there goes a bit.

But at competitions, it's totally the people that make robotics so awesome, sure robots are cool, but people are better.

You would be amazed to see the way my family is into FIRST. All through the building season, while we were worrying about our autonomous, my mother was telling me, "It's too complicated! You have to make it simpler!" She went through this elaborate spiel to try to get me to tell my team to change the design at almost four weeks into the build season. She's more competitive than I am!

Then, when they went to the Phoenix regional, they saw what FIRST was really about. And let me tell you, it wasn't about the robot anymore. That's another great thing about FIRST. Its never really about the robot. That's just extra stuff on the side. What we're really here for is to build relationships and work together in teams!

Of course, that didn't stop my dad from getting hooked. He watched the entire national competition on NASA.gov and called me after every match to talk strategy. After we lost, he waited for about a half hour to call me because he thought I was going to be upset.

But, through my experiences with FIRST, I learned that you don't have to be upset when you lose. The chance to play is all you need!

this is my first yr on the robotics team at my school. what made me interested was the idea of building a robot and seeing it compete. but then build season started and i became a programmer. but that was cool. and then it was regionals and nationals and i had a blast there. i have not had that much fun in a while. so it was probably the amount of fun i had at the regionals and the nationals that has made me decide to start a team up at my new school next year.

Well, I wish that I could say that I went all out last year, but I didn't. When I got here this year though, I was mjorly hooked. Something about Nationals just does that to you, I guess..

I guess what seemed like a million people, and a million balloons, and one cool arena will do that to just about anyone.lol