[Gabe Salas Jr.]

This will be my third and (unfortunately) final year on a FIRST Robotics team. Each year I was on the team, we have been fortunate enough to attend two regionals as well as Nationals. Our team does year round fundraising in order to make this possible. If you guys have trouble coming up with methods of gathering money, I could make a nice list for you.

Going to a second regional will give students an opportunity to visit new places around this wonderful world. I have been to Toronto, Seattle, and Houston. This week the team plans to head on out to New York for our second regional. Many students are excited, and cannot hardly wait. Many of them have never seen snow, and hopes to see some at New York City. Visiting each city gives you more insight about this world, and how different it really is compared to your usual corner of your world. Not only does attending a second regional gives your team more time to work on the robot, but it also helps you see what other team's have done with there robot as well. The best thing about attending a second regional is talking to people. You can learn a lot by human interaction; customs, lifestyles, dialects, etc.

The students on our team does not have the mentality of, "Oh, we have another regional to go to...." The students on our robotic's team have worked their butts off (many since last summer) to go to these competitions. Why slack off now? We have built a robot, raised a lot of money to go to these competitions, and we want to really see our work paid off. Motivate your students to get genuinely excited about robotics. So much, that they are willing to sacrifice their "social lives" to fundraising, so they can go to a second regional and enjoy themselves. Trust me, it is worth it.