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Unread 17-10-2013, 13:55
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seg9585 seg9585 is offline
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AKA: Eric
FRC #4276 (Surf City Vikings)
Team Role: Engineer
 
Join Date: Feb 2006
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Location: Boeing (Seal Beach, CA)
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Re: Career Advice: Programming? Please help!

I'm an engineer (and don't want to be a teacher) but spend plenty of my after-work time training and working with FIRST students on my robotics team. The teacher I work with at the school is very hands-on, but I've mentored teams where the teacher is only there to supervise and keep the classrooms accessible to work and meet in.
In cases like these, you do spend your time outside of work to inspire the students and help them find their "aha" moment in engineering. I hope, at least, my efforts have helped the students on the team's I've mentored become inspired to be future engineers (that's my ultimate goal).

Moral of the story is, do what you love for work (if it's programming, that's great), and spend your time after work inspiring students. As a double benefit, you can do so without having to worry about too many of the difficult logistics on the school side of things (classroom availability, funding accounts, etc), and spend your efforts focused on student teaching and technical areas.

Keep in mind you are doing this because you love it, and do it on your own time unpaid. Besides teaching (a programming or engineering class, for instance) or starting a company developing products used by robotics students, doing what you love doesn't always correspond with getting a big paycheck to accompany it.
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Team 204 Student 2001, 2002 (Voorhees, NJ)
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