Thread: The "FIRST" experience?
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Unread 31-05-2009, 20:58
,4lex S.'s Avatar
,4lex S. ,4lex S. is offline
University Mentor
AKA: Alex Strong
FRC #2702 (REBotics)
Team Role: College Student
  
Join Date: Dec 2007
Rookie Year: 2004
Location: Waterloo, ON, Canada
Posts: 195
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Re: The "FIRST" experience?
I get where you are coming from. I think that as long as students have the opportunity to explore their own ambitions (within reason and practical constraints) they will be more likely to become inspired by the program though. I was lucky throughout my FIRST career to have a few good mentors who were able to teach without completely taking over the project, and I think my teamates and I are better for it. We know we've made mistakes, but the journey of building our robot has led us in general to pursue engineering on our own ambition, which I think is stronger than anything another person could have inspired in us. I am biased of course, because I am self-motivated. In general I think that engineering teams probably inspired more students, while student run teams can inspire students who are more ambitious. Perhaps an equilibrium could be called for???

Why is FIRST valuable to society? Because it inspires kids to be Engineers, not Basketball players.
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FRC 2702: REBotics 2011 Mentor ::: FRC 1006: Fast Eddie Robotics 2005-2009 Alumni ::: FLL 4050: 2004 Alumni
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