[KelliV]

The people on my FIRST team are awesome and have always treated me as an equal even though I am a female. I've been doing FIRST related stuff sience FLL in 6th grade and I am currently a Junior in High School. There were only two times that I was ever discriminated against.

In FLL I was told that I was not good enough to program because I was a female. It was a guy that said it and it made me feel so bad that I decided to show him and finished all the programming a good three days before he did. The teacher told him that his weren't as good as mine so not only did I do them faster but they used my programs insted of his!

At FIRST Nationals in '04 I had a guy from another team come up to me and ask me why I got to be on WildStang and how I passed my interview to get on the team becuase only men should be accepted. Not only was I amazed that he would actually say that, I was laughing to myself (not out loud, I am not that mean yet) while he was saying it becuase WildStang is all inclusive and there aren't interviews or try outs. When I informed him of this he just laughed at me and said "Oh, so that's why you made the team." I just let it go and didn't worry about it becuase people only make fun of others becuase they don't have enough self-esteem to think highly of themselves.