Chief Delphi - The FIRST Effect

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The FIRST Effect

A first year senior on our team has been writing a weekly column in a local newspaper, The Goffstown News. Her last article was not published but she shared it with our team and I thought it good enough to share (with her permission) with Chief Delphi. What she says about our team I believe is true for most FIRST teams (I hope). There was a thread last year about how FIRST has effected people'sives but I love reading the stories so if anyone has one to share please do.

Here is the article:

Joining FIRST was, while a spur-of-the-moment, probably one of the best decisions I will ever make.
When I decided to join the team, several of my friends expressed very valid concerns related to my experiences on a similar academic team four years ago. They were also stunned at my sudden and apparently unprovoked change in personality. For eight years, music, theatre and performing had been my life. I would rearrange my schedule to fit in a new show. FIRST was something that I had just wanted to try. Little did I know that it would change every plan I had for the rest of my life.
FIRST has become something incredible...an experience that I can never recreate or replace. It's become an addiction. It's done something I never thought possible – replacing my love for theatre and performing with a love for robots. I used to sit other places and say, “Wow, I wish I was at rehearsal.” Now I sit at rehearsal and say, “Wow, I wish I was at robotics.” My mindset has changed from being a theatre or music major to majoring in physics. Talk about a complete 180.
The atmosphere at FIRST is unlike any festival, rehearsal or meeting I've ever been to. And the people are incredible. I felt comfortable the very first time I walked in that green metal door in September 2010. There are no cliques. The JSR students and the Hopkinton students mesh effortlessly.
After this FIRST season, my main source of excitement about my new college is not the fantastic arts program or music program, but the satellite math and science high school on campus, my chance to become an FRC mentor, and the fact that there is a regional held minutes away.
At the conclusion of my senior/rookie season with Team Oz-Ram, I have a lot of people to thank. First off, thanks to all the sponsors that helped us get the Tin Man 6 and Tin Man 6.5 built and functional. We certainly couldn't have gotten anywhere without you. Next, I have to thank everyone who read my column. Knowing that people actually were excited about the team and about FIRST means a lot to me.
Lastly, I want to thank Team Oz-Ram. I know I'm not always the easiest to put up with, and I know that I can occasionally make simple things very difficult, but I really appreciate how so many of you took the time to involve me and teach me how the team worked, and to help me find my place on the team. I also want to thank you for being not only my teammates, but my friends...and for acting as a surrogate family at times. You were so warm and accepting, and thanks for showing this rookie what she's been missing out on.
A FIRST season can be likened to a roller coaster. And I can say that John Stark or Hopkinton, drive team or Chairman's committee, Safety Award or bust, there's no one else I'd have rather taken this ride with. The best way to sum up how I feel about my season is with a lyric from the Broadway musical “Wicked: The Untold Story of the Witches of Oz”:
“I do believe I have been changed for the better. … And because I knew you, I have been changed for good.”
I love you guys. Rookie out.

~*~
Rachel Cisto, Photographer

Re: The FIRST Effect

That's a fantastic story! It's really similar to a column that I wrote for our school newspaper at the end of my sophomore year. Unfortunately, I don't think that I have an electronic copy of the text any more (If I find it, I'll post it), but there is one that I wrote this year that I can share. It's not a "FIRST changed my life" narrative, but I think that some FIRST-ers could relate to it...

Quote:

Originally Posted by Pit Stop

When you build something that’s big, complex and expensive, like a robot, you hope it doesn’t break.

Unfortunately, sometimes it does.

I attended a competition at Grand Valley State University last weekend with the Gearheads robotics team. When we arrived, we knew that we had some debugging to do, but didn’t expect any glaring problems.

Unfortunately, we expected wrong.

The telescoping elevator on our robot wasn’t working. The lights on the pneumatics were blinking and changing colors accordingly, but air wasn’t moving. We couldn’t hang tubes--the primary way of scoring points in the game--without the elevator. At least the drive train was working. We could still play defense.

Unfortunately, that broke too.

A bolt came loose mid-match, and a wheel axle slipped out. All they could tell from the driver station was that half of our drive train was out—there was no way of knowing that by continuing to try and move forward, the problem was getting worse.

When the robot came back to the pit, we assessed the wreckage: everything but the wheel itself was damaged. The sprocket assembly—two sprockets welded to either side of a hub—was unusable. One of the two sprockets was bent and the teeth were in various states of scratched, bent and missing chunks. We did have a spare hub and spare sprockets, but they weren’t welded together. We sent a teammate to the machine shop on the other side of campus to get the weld done.

Unfortunately, we had already missed our next match.

Fortunately, it gave us time to work on the elevator. A helpful robot inspector came to our pit and helped us realize that we were using a 24-volt valve instead of a 12-volt one. Oops. Changing that made it work.

Unfortunately, the hub still wasn’t back.

We sent a parent to find out what was up. She returned 15 minutes later, saying that the welding machine had jumped and that a sprocket was now missing a tooth. However, she said they could try and remove the damaged sprocket from the original hub and try and put a new one on. We sent her back with both.

In the meantime, we were trying another possible fix: taking two wheel hubs from spare wheels and sandwiching them together with two more sprockets using good ol’ nuts and bolts. Ten minutes of ratcheting and two sore wrists later, we had a hub that was usable. It was by no means the best fix, but we had already missed our next match by 15 minutes. The current match, 75, was being delayed because of an error on the field. Our next match was 76.
We put the entire assembly back on in five minutes. We were on the field in seven, arriving literally just in time for the match.

Unfortunately, it was our last match of the event. There was no chance that we were being picked for the elimination rounds, but our robot was finally working. My eyes weren’t leaking saltwater because we weren’t picked, but because we did the impossible.

In the words of one of our mentors as I returned to the pit to clean up the carnage, “This is why you never give up.”

Re: The FIRST Effect

That sounds like our season. Last year we were done early and had little to do as our robot just kept going. For various reasons this year we were late building and did not have a fully functional robot until late in our second regional. Because of all the hard work and not giving up it was very exciting to finally see our minibot climb the pole in our 8th and 9th matches in Boston.

Re: The FIRST Effect

Does anyone have more of these? Rachel's is heartwarming (in that robotics way), and Kara's reads like "The New Cool" (which I couldn't put down). I'm liking these student-written articles. :)

Re: The FIRST Effect

I can relate with this a lot. It seems just like yesterday when I found about FIRST.

I remembering meeting Taylor (the head coach) for the first time when they were exhibiting their 2009 robot in for the school orientation. I heard a testimonial from a fellow senior and a recommendation from the team itself, but that was all I went by. The team met after schools on Wednesdays, which was inconvenient for me because at the time, I was running cross-country (quite horribly, I must add). The meetings didn't become as much as priority to me and I missed a quite a few. Eventually, the season built up to the 2010 kickoff. I thought that was nothing. After the kickoff, I still wasn't convinced, but I got a glimpse into what the building season was. I didn't get to do much (moreortheless learn the names of the tools:o ), however, I saw the dedication that our seniors and team leader had into getting the robot made. 1529 then made the first trip to the DC regional, and while we kind of blundered there, the other teams really opened my eyes. I would give my life to shake hands with all these teams, because they taught me a valuable lesson.

I felt like I lived in a contained world then. I saw that I live in a world of kids that want to learn, like me.

Re: The FIRST Effect

I finally found the file with my other column while I was cleaning off my external hard drive. This is from the end of my sophomore year. I've still continued to change who I was robotics-wise since then (having been a major build contributer and a team captain), but I have been accepted to MTU and will be going there in the fall.

Quote:

Originally Posted by To be a girl Gearhead

For Christmas or their birthday, most teenagers dream of a car--I dream of a robot.

The Gearheads robotics team is given six weeks to design, build, program and occasionally test a 120 lb. robot, the purpose of which changes each year. This year, the goal of the game is to shoot 9-inch balls at targets that are attached to the backs of opposing robots. Think of it as robot basketball, but on smooth ice. And you're not wearing skates--you're wearing thick, fuzzy socks.

I remember walking into the informational meeting last year. I was a small-feeling, very confused little freshman. The only reason that I even showed interest in the team was because my friend's older brother was a member, and she told me stories about how fun it was. So I found her, and began talking excitedly. Soon, a veteran team member came over and joined in the conversation. After picking up an interest survey from a nearby table, I looked around and realized that the room was filled mostly with guys.
Building a robot didn't seem so appealing, either--I didn't want to be an engineer, and I wasn't nearly geeky enough to be able to do all of that...math. I glanced down, and saw that there were other areas that I could participate in, such as making team-themed necklaces, drawing up logos, and business management. Making necklaces is fun. I thought I'd do that.

Wow, was I wrong.

When I changed, I don't know. I don't even want to know anymore. Sometime between September and January, I changed. Guys weren't so bad and scary any more, either. Robot building suddenly seemed to be the best thing in the world.

Yet, the hard work and satisfaction of building a robot isn't all this girl-among-guys gets. Walking into the shop, I know that I've conquered my assumptions about guys. now, I'll jump right into the work, doing whatever needs to be done, from drilling mounting holes to operating some of the heavier machinery, working alongside a dozen fellow team members of varying ages, genders, ethnicities, and personalities.

It's not all about the robot. Okay, yes it is, but there are some non-robot aspects to the team. Through working together towards one common goal and having fun along the way, we become one big happy family that understands each other perfectly.

Joining the team has had more of an effect on me than I realized it would. Now, science to me is like a light to a moth. Math used to be a feared creature in my books, but now it seems a lot easier and a lot more enjoyable. I used to want to become a band teacher (sorry Mr. Cleveland) but Robotics changed that. THe plans are currently to major in Engineering at Michigan Tech--the one career that I've been dead set against since I was a little kid.

I can't believe that all I ever wanted to do for the team and in life was sit around and draw logos. All I want to do now is CAD a robot, build it, and then drop everything and use my awesome new HTML skills and update the Web site.