[ehfeinberg]

In my senior year of high school, I felt that there was very little else I could learn from my team engineering wise. (I still learned a lot about managing and communicating) So when I got to the university of maryland the first thing I looked for was a new project team that would give me new opportunities to learn and have fun. I found the Baja SAE team, and now I have been spending upwards of 10 hours a week building an off-road race car.

For me Baja SAE is basically a continuation of the FRC project team style. Working with professional engineers and professors (who consult F1 teams in their spare time) and even more advanced manufacturing and design. We have in house CNC machines and welding that I will get to learn how to use. And we have a 4 day long competition at the end of our build season where we have a 4 hour long endurance race where if something doesn't break its a miracle.

FRC was a great experience don't get me wrong. But there are so many great experiences that by only mentoring FRC in college you are really missing out. There are so many great project teams, like Baja SAE, Formula SAE, solar car, solar decathlon, human powered helicopter, etc. Every college should have at least one engineering project team, so go join a big one, or a small one, it doesn't really matter. Go to 4 hour vehicle dynamics lectures at 8am on a Sunday, go spend your free time making jigs in front of a knee mill, go learn how to use finite element analysis to justify your design decisions, go learn exponentially more than you could on an FRC team, but most of all go have fun.