[LeelandS]

My involvement with FIRST stemmed back to 6th grade, when I joined my middle school's FLL team. Now, at the time, I didn't know what FIRST was. My little mind was not able to comprehend all the talk about Gracious Professionalism and For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology stuff my mentor was throwing at me.

So for a few years, I viewed FLL and "The big robots" as two totally separate entities. That would change in 9th grade, when I officially joined FRC. Before that, I learned about FRC at one of the FLL championships at the University of Rochester. There was an FRC team there modeling out and demoing their robot for Triple Play. That's when they had me. I was hooked. And I've been here even since.

So, looking back, I found out about FIRST in 6th grade when the morning announcements told us about the "Lego Robotics Club".