[BQuennell]

Quite a personal thread isn't this? Funny how much FIRST really has changed almost anyone who enters the challenge.

For me, FIRST has done a number of things, it took my simple interest in electronics from my freshman class to a whole new level and by the next year I was working with both friends I’d known for years and friends I met on the spot on a challenge that I never knew I could face. FIRST gave me the inspiration to try to become a better student in my studies. I learned about how to meet a deadline (and stall if you don't make it).

When I graduated from my high school this last year I picked up a job working as a camp councilor over the summer, it gave me plenty of time to relax and enjoy the outdoors. Try to spend a month without so much as a roof over your head and you tend to yearn for some kind of comfort from home, but for a FIRST junkie like me, the only thing I really missed was FIRST. Helping kids make tye-dye shirts made me think of the great time I had doing robot inspections in Atlanta this last year and meeting the great team, Wildstangs. Figuring out why a dishwasher wont run made me think of all the times I got to trace the wires on our electrical system to make sure everything was running smoothly and honestly, without having done the electrical for 3 years, I don't know if that thing would have ever gotten fixed.

It really is incredible what FIRST can do for you and really, enjoy it as much as you can. Meet complete strangers from the other side of the country or even the world, and realize that all over the place, people share your passion, and there really is nothing better than being able to hang out and root for each others team or help out if something goes wrong. FIRST is an amazing organization, it's almost impossible to compare it to other groups because it is just so different in its message and in its spirit than anything else out there. A group that actually inspires a lazy teen to get into college like myself really can never be described properly as anything else but brilliant.