With my name right on top of the thread, I think I got to post a respond in here...
Well, I am sure everyone understands that people like me stick with FIRST because it's just such a fun and great place to be. Every second I spend doing FIRST I learn a new thing. I got to meet all kind of people all over the country, and I get to talk to them normally over the Internet.
There are a lot of reasons why people like me are staying away from a team even though they are still sticking around for FIRST. Most of those people have experiences from doing FIRST for a few years, and usually they've graduated from high school (which explain why they are not with their old team). Of course there are the engineers who actually have a job that can't stick with a team too much...
A really big reason is that college life becomes too big for a close relationship with a team, so we can only help out from the side. Believe me, I've tried, and I learned that it can't or too hard to be done all 4 (or more) years of college.
A second reason might be that we feel we can help a lot more people than just in one team. I know people like Jessica and Robby are working with a lot of different people from different teams. At the same thing, we can also learn from the different teams because every one of them has a different way of doing FIRST.
Then, there are other reasons that force people away from any team. Maybe the college they are going to are too far away from any team...
There are not really many options to us non-team FIRST participants... When there is no one team to dedicate to, there isn't a robot we can dedicate our time into. So we can either work with FIRST (people like Nate?) Or we can help out different teams on more of a surface level.
I think there are too little of us to know what sort of thing we really do. It's really different from people to people. And it¡¦s too early to tell. Some of us still haven't found the right team yet; some of us already have something we are already doing. Mean while, for me, I believe I won't be doing FIRST with one team next year, although I have no idea what I will do. However, I predict that it will be a mix between working for FIRST and different teams. But I really need to ask Jason Morrella (an adult FIRST-a-holic who's no longer doing FIRST with a team, but instead regional director of FIRST) advise about this... I guess Matt is right; maybe this can only be more of a spectator aspect of FIRST for us¡K But I am not going to settle for that; I am going to make sure I have actual involvement.
Maybe we got to start our own organization for non-team FIRST-a-holics... But then again, there are too little of us. Maybe we will just settle for an organization for non high school FIRST-a-holic...
