[Adam Y.]

Though, I can’t help but wonder, is creating problem solvers enough? The way I see it, part of being a great problem solver is the ability to discover the problems in the first place. If your every day engineers and scientists are the problem solvers, then it is people like Dean Kamen who are the problem discoverers. And not everyone is like Dean Kamen when he invented FIRST to solve the problem of shortage of scientist and engineers, or Segway to solve the problem of transportation. It takes open minded people who are not afraid to think differently, and have the courage to try new things. And that I believe is something beyond FIRST and its goal to inspire high school students about science, technology, and engineering.

I have always thought that the problems were very easy to find. It was just a matter of solving them. There are really just too many big problems right now that do need to be solved. Disease, famine, the electrical grid, new fuel sources, and terrorism are just some of the problems that need to be solved. I feel that it is a matter of what you want to do and not what needs to be done.

I have no answer to those questions. Frankly, it took my entire life time just to get to these questions. But since I am here already, I might as well start looking for some of these answers.

I think it was Hemingway who said,"Life is a joke. Once you figure it out you die."