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I origionally participated in FIRST in 1992 and 1993 while working as an engineer at Bose Corp. While there, my company would not allow me any time during the normal work day. I would have the students come to my office daily to design/build the robot. At that time we had the run of the place for the most part. We would typically spend 40+ hours per week working on the project. This to me was like having a second full time job.
However, due to my connections with FIRST and working with the students, I learned that I should be a teacher. I was fortunate enough to land a job teaching CAD with one of the high schools we were sponsoring (Assabet Valley).
Since then, FIRST has been integrated into to the CAD curriculum (we are a technical high school), as well as the Precision Machine Shop. Therefore, most of the time spent designing and building is done during the day. We do have regular scheduled meetings on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays where our team meets with the engineering support. These metting typically lasts 3 to 4 hours except on Saturday where the meeting will last close to 6 hours.
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