[Richomundo]

What was your worst first experience? I love FIRST, but i have had my equal share of good and bad experiences.

Mine was when i was temporarily kicked off of the team for sabotaging a bowl of cashews. We built our robot at the team captains house because we had nowhere else to build it. We weren't allowed to build the robot at school because the Shop Supervisor hated the lady that ran our team... but anyways thats besides the point. I was kicked off the team for a total of 6 hours, approximately a week before our Los ANgeles Regional... Since the high school only had 5 members willing to be on the team this year (not one student from last year, which kind of tells you something) we imported 3 8th graders to help us build our robot and join the team early because 5 people can't build a robot. So apparently i sabotaged a can of cashews by filling it up with water. Now being a mature high school student, drowning cashews isn't my thing. Sounds like an 8th grade thing to do, not a 10th grade thing to do. So i was kicked off and (being the only programmer there ) i was also told i had never been an asset eve nthough i had done programming. At the LA regional our team had no motivation because we had been belittled and attacked by this woman etc etc etc... after our rounds were over we hooked up a few laptops and played starcraft against eachother and proceeded home. No party, no celebration, and definately no spirit to return next year.

However the FIRST experience was fun enough for the dissatisfied members of the team (everyone) to branch off and form another robotics team for next year on the same team.