[Ian Curtis]

I think the saddest part about this thread is the implicit assumption that "High school students are dumb." And it isn't just FIRST people -- it happens everywhere. I think a lot of people (especially smart people) tend to base everything off of themselves. They think 'If I couldn't do that when I was 16, how is this person doing it?!' In actuality, chances are pretty good they could've done it when they were 16, but no one was around to introduce them to the lathe or computer programming.

Designing or fabricating, it doesn't really matter. My high school team was one of the ones that did essentially all of our fabrication in-house with student labor. Since we had access to such nice equipment and good mentors, it came out pretty well. We got asked a lot who did it, and had people who straight up refused to believe it was students. Many of them didn't go on to technical careers, for example our best student welder and machinist is now a commercial fisherman.

I think engineers who don't come from FIRST backgrounds are often the hardest to win over. Engineers love to tell everyone that engineering is best, but I think they most love hanging out in the ivory tower.