[Tommy F.]

The gifted program at my middle school offered a robotics class, along with others that also had engineering behind them. The class was mainly building a VEX bot at first by instructions, and then doing whatever we wanted with the kit. I was one of the only ones that actually programmed my robot, not using the default configurations. I liked what I did there.

But I guess what really influenced me joining the team was my friend. His dad is a mentor for the team. So I was basically dragged into robotics, and now I'm addicted. I plan on pursuing a career in software engineering, mainly because of my school's robotics team.