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Unread 16-03-2006, 15:29
indieFan indieFan is offline
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Re: Percentage of Work Done by Students.

Quote:
Originally Posted by RebelWithARobot
1) No company is going to hire a student simply because they worked on a FIRST robot.

My point is that if a student is very interested in being an Engineer they will go to college to do so. They will learn what they need to know in college. I'm not going to argue that you can't learn as much from FIRST as you can from college, but company's don't care what FIRST team you're from, they care about your degree. FIRST his in place to show you what Engineers do, not to teach you how to be an Engineer.
On the contrary. I handed my resume to someone at a career fair and had listed my undergraduate research and my having mentored/coached two FIRST teams. He looked at the resume and said, "Oh, I see you have 5 years robotics experience." He then proceeded to write down "5 yrs" on the resume. I later received a phone call asking for an interview and got the job working with robots. He barely even touched on my undergrad research or my college during the interview. You never know what an employer is looking for until you're there.

Getting back to the thread at hand:

Yes, it is great when the students have the time and opportunity to do the majority of the building. However, many schools do not have the time and/or resources to do this. Many lessons can be learned, including how *not* to build a robot from watching the engineers/mentors. (Those of you that saw 1070 at AZ on the first couple of days will know what I'm talking about.)

In addition, the engineers/mentors actually get benefits from working on the robots. 1) They refresh their memory on the more basic engineering fundamentals. 2) They learn things outside their area of expertise. 3) They get hands-on experience which is absolutely invaluable. In order to be able to fix a process, you need to be able to see the mechanical issues at hand. In order to design an effective piece of equipment, you must understand how things are machined/manufactured. Don't see FIRST as only being for the students, see it as being for the present engineers/mentors, as well as the future generation.

indieFan
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