[Jherbie53]

I have a passion for FIRST robotics. I know there are a lot of you that are just the same way. You keep coming back, maybe not with the same team, but you can’t escape it, nor do you want to. You get into it in high school, or you started mentoring and love passing on the knowledge you know to the students on your team, you just love it. Whether you come back and learn how to mentor with your team (like me), or are trying to start a new team around your college or job, or becoming a volunteer or Ref for a regional, or continue to mentor with your team. You just have to be around it some way or another.

You start thinking about it all the time. Then you start counting the days to January for Kickoff, right after the Championship competition, (right now I have a counter going on my computer for just that) or you check Chief Delphi 3-4 times a day, in the middle of July! You start thinking about the ideas that you want to share with your team at your first meeting in the fall. Some might be what you can do differently building the robot to get it done faster, or how you can market your team and FIRST to sponsors and the community around you. Ideas keep popping into your head, even when you sleep.

By the time you’re doing these things you’re practically eating, sleeping, working, and living FIRST. I know there are times when it the last thing on your mind, but it only takes passing a construction site or seeing something on TV that catches your eye, and you’re already thinking “How does that work? We might use that next year on the robot.” It keeps you coming back, I know. I’ve even scheduled my classes in college so I could be at my teams meetings. I even did it this next semester to help with a Lego team where sponsoring again. Don’t even try and deny it if you’ve done it to, there are people that will rat you out.

There are also people out there that aren’t as passionate as me. They do love being a part of it in high school; but once they graduate from high school, they go their separate way. Usually they go to college for something other than a technology degree, unlike us FIRST lifers. That is perfectly ok with me. They probably won’t forget their experience in FIRST, which is why they might come back to it in the future.

To sum it up, FIRST is just one of my passions in life. It’s not always my top one, but it’s very close. This is something I felt like sharing. I can’t wait until our next meeting. BOB needs a tune up for the Kettering Kickoff!