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Unread 13-11-2003, 22:36
KenWittlief KenWittlief is offline
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I think you have missed the basic purpose of FIRST. Taking science and math classes in highschool is often a very dry experience - you are learning a ton a theory and knowledge, but you get very little exposure to real application

in many colleges this carries on into your first year or two - you still take lots of math, and physics, chemistry, but you dont get to start taking the real intereseting engineering courses yet.

the purpose of FIRST is to show you what comes after that - the light at the end of the tunnel. the FIRST program is very much like real engineering. We dont show up as mentors for FIRST teams with painted on smiles, and have lots of fun, then go back to our real engineering jobs where they lock us in a dungeon and make us do calculus all day.

Engineering at its most basic level is people changing the world. Engineers solve problems. Engineers take physics and science where it is, and apply it to real life problems to create new and better solutions.

To do that, and do it effectively, you need a knowledge base of where physics and science are today. You need a base of mathematics, so you dont waste your time using trial and error to design new systems.

The knowledge you gain in college is the tool you use for the rest of your life. Lots of people can look at a problem and come up with clever solutions - but to implement those solutions, to design and produce working systems, you need that background. Otherwise you have to create everything from scratch!

When you are in college you are still in that tunnel. If you liked what you saw engineers doing with their lives when you were on a FIRST team, then stick it out and you will get there.

And at the same time, if you think you really want to do something else, pursue some other field, there is nothing wrong with that. To be happy in life you need a job doing something you enjoy every day, or you will be miserable for the rest of your life.
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