[popnbrown]

Another reason I am in FIRST.

There's a student that always complained or would sag his shoulders when asked to go work on something. He'd be fine working on the task and is very smart, but would always have some sort of "but.." statement or reaction. Of course, he's a great kid and guy, so we've developed a friendly relationship.

During competition, one of the teams requested some chain, and I went over to the pit admin table to give it to them, and the student joined me. We ended up taking it over to the team directly, and saw that they were in fact actually building their robot. The student, who by the way, has never been in any FIRST program, immediately thought of helping them. He didn't even just build their robot but he mentored them and talked the entire drive train through with them. He ended up staying with the team from 3:00pm to 5:00pm.

When the rest of the team was leaving. I came to speak to him and see where he was. Our pit crew was going to stay back and work on the robot a little, so one of our other young mentors (a freshman in college) and another student also came with me to check out this student working.

He was so interested on working with this team, that he convinced our other mentor and the other student to also stay with him until pits were closed. The three of them missed going to a team dinner, and hanging out with the team and spend some free time.

I am so insanely proud of him. To see someone that complains from working on his own team's robot (not really complaining but still) to without any objection at all working for 5 hours straight on another team's robot. If anything at all, this one moment will keep me going with FIRST.

FIRST is so cool...