When did you decide to pursue engineering?

[Amanda Morrison]

Personally, I have no technical ability. When I joined FIRST, it was not for my interests in a technical career but instead because of my love of people and my enthusiasm in this program. I am interested to see your answers...feel free to give me some commentary.

[Jnadke]

Every since I was a little kid I wanted to be a computer engineer....

Okay, so maybe that was a hokey childhood dream, but it's true. I loved computers. I wanted to learn how they worked. How to build those little pieces that make them work.

FIRST made me make my final decision to be an EE. Morely the economy. I had a tough decision between Computer science, computer engineering, or electrical engineering. CS is useless unless you have extraordinary amounts of company experience these days.

[Joel J]

From a young age I excelled in Math and Science courses, and was average in everything else. My family members are known to be 'accountants' and nothing less was expected of me. I, for a short period of time, toyed with the idea of becoming an accountant, but decided it was not the career for me.

Time went by and I found a new interest, flying. Flying aeroplanes (yeah, I am from a country colonized by the British), in my opinion, is one of the coolest things to do. I would daydream about becoming an airline pilot, soaring above the clouds, and not having a care in the world. Then, I joined RAGE.

To be perfectly honest, I was originally attracted to the RAGE Robotics team because it presented me with the opportunity to drive a cool-looking robot around. I always liked to drive things--Aeroplane, Go Kart, RC Cars, etc--and had no problem adding a robot to the list. I practiced driving the robot for quite some time before I was able to do it properly.

During my second season with RAGE, things began to change. I enrolled in a C++ course offered at my school, and was exposed to the programming language used to make the robot "go" for the first time. I found programming to be an excellent pass time activity and I was able to do it without extensive studying/practicing. I was hooked.

At the end of my second season with RAGE, I had to start thinking about college. I knew I liked to drive 'things'; I knew I liked to program; and I also knew that non [math/science] fields were not my forte. So which would I choose: To become a programmer, or an airline pilot? I was stumped.

My third season with RAGE began and I was still stumped as to which road I would travel. I was finally selected to be one of the robot operators for the upcoming competitions and therefore refocused my attention to the game. After the competitions were over, our robot, overall, did well. The exact competition results are inconsequential.

The summer months came. I HAD to decide then what I wanted to do with my life: fly high, or make robots go. I reflected on my third season with RAGE. I had alot of fun driving the robot during competitions, but saw it a useless career. I realized that I would rather write computer programs, and things along those lines, than to pilot an aircraft, or any other machine for that matter. The choice that at one point had me stumped became an easy one to make. I would pursue a career in 'programming.'

Next year, I will attend whichever college accepts me, and major in Computer Engineering. I will still find time to "drive stuff around," but will treat it like I would a hobby.

[Rich Wong]

When I was in elementary school,
I would take all my toys apart with a
screw driver.

I needed to know how everything
works. Sometimes I was not able
to reassemble the toys. Was I in trouble.

That was the start of my engineering
career.

[DLyons]

When I was young I would take everything apart I could get my hands on. I couldn't get it back together back then but now in most cases its a piece of cake. I am a car guy so I mod my truck and have learned a great deal about engines and vehicle dynamics from it

[MattK]

I am still just a freshman, but here is what I have to say...

I stink @ math, I always have... always will. I have been tested and they say I have issues with recalling patterns. I am surprised I understand computers so well.

But anyway, I love to create stuff and then say "Hey, Look what I built! It can do this this and this!"


There is nothing better for me than that, I love to watch people when they see what I have made and they enjoy it and want to get involved too.

[Brandon Martus]

Its not really about engineering -- but I'm gonna tell my story anyway

All through high school, I was set on majoring in Architectural Drafting. The only problem was that I wasn't too good at drawing by hand. Give me AutoCAD, and I could do some crazy stuff, pretty fast.

I started teaching myself AutoLISP, and programming my own little macros and shortcuts, and even my own menus. I also began tinkering with websites a little bit. Then my senior year, I took Pascal. I had no idea what the class was, I just knew it involved math and computers. Turned out, it was an intro to programming, with Turbo Pascal.

Woo. I liked programming, it came to me quickly, and I decided to change my major and study Computer Science when i went to University of Detroit Mercy.

So, like many college students, I changed my major from Architecture to CS, although I wasn't technically taking classes yet -- but anyway.

Thats my story.

Oh -- and because of FIRST (working on this website, actually) -- I decided I wanted to concentrate on web-based programming. By teaching myself Perl & working with HTML alot on the early forums at chiefdelphi.com, I got used to learning new languages, which helped me when I got to college & work.

[RBrandy]

Ok....
At my first and second years in FIRST i decided that I wanted to be a Mechanical engineer. Then this year I started helping a FIRST lego league team and that experience made me want to change form engineering to engineering education.
Well thats my short and sweet story

[Jeff Rodriguez]

there is no 'just now' option.

[JVN]

In 7th grade I started taking woodshop for the first time. One day we took a 'field trip' to the HS to view the technology program there. We got to see all the cool stuff like the CAD labs, and the machine shop. Also, sitting in the middle of a table there was a little robot, with a 3 pronged claw, clutching a ball. This was my HS's 1995 robot from the Ramp and Roll Competition. When I got to see all this cool stuff I knew I wanted to learn about it. This was when my engineering *spark* was born.

Probably saved me from being a lawyer or something...

It doesn't take much, just a little shove in the right direction.

[evulish]

When I first started robotics, I wanted to be a CS major or programmer or something to do with computers. I entered robotics for the animation part of the competition. Rather than animating, I found myself sitting back and watching. I got rather bored of that and wandered around. The adults forced me to make buttons for a year The next year, I knew I didn't want to try animation again so I went for webpage. I, again, got to do nothing (not that I was unable to do anything...just everything I did was rejected or ignored). Made buttons for another year. (Although i did manage to wander up to the shop to help out a little bit). The year after that (which was this past year), I dove right into R&D to get a better feel for engineering. Right then, I knew I wanted to be a CS major no more. I had never really liked the idea of programming for a living...I like it more as a hobby. Engineering was incredibly interesting, though. I normally work well under pressure and can usually hit deadlines. I also like to be hands-on. If FIRST did nothing else for me, it at least did what it was meant for originally...to inspire kids in science and technology.

[Josh Hambright]

I started playing with electronics when i was in like 4th grade...and i always knew that was something i was good at and wanted to do...computers entered my life while in preschool and i have always had a talent for those as well...

Though i would have a hard time seeing myself going into engineering...maybe a more technology based degree...like electrical engineering technology...or something like that...

[Not2B]

I guess I knew when I was in high school, although my Dad say's he could tell I was an engineer as a kid. I took everything apart, I loved science, I spell like a moron, my room growing up was covered in plastic model airplanes, I moved to RC cars, RC airplanes, and I dominated all the high school physics "games" we had in school. (My old high school STILL has no FIRST team.)

While at UofMich, I figured out that I like projects more than I like homework and tests. SOOOO - I got my masters in Design Methodology - which just means that I got to work on lots of projects, and take lots of wacky classes*.

That's my story - FIRST and I just kinda fit together.

* Wacky classes include MEMS (Micro Electro Mechanical System). How come I can design and build a working 2-speed transmission 0.5mm in length, but a robot transmission is "scary"?

Ive always loved to build things, take things apart, and work with computers since my dad bought our first computer back in 1989. I Took apart my parents TV when I was 10 and I tried fixing the problem with the tube connection. I had no idea what I was doing, but I had to try. I never did fix that TV, but if that were to happen now, I would have fixed it. Heck, thats the only reason there is a TV in my room today

The clincher was back in the summer of 2001, after my sophomore year in high school, my dad wanted me to try an engineering camp, so I went to the Milwaukee School of Engineering EE week long camp. After I came back, I knew for sure what I wanted to do. Heck, I liked the school so much, I applied there and I got on. As far as I know, that is where I will be attending school next year.

[Jim Giacchi]

For me its really a couple of things.
First, my great-grandfather was a plumber, (still got his tools, they made stuff to last), grandfather was a tool-and-die maker (still got his tools, same initials, yes all mine), and my dad is an electrical engineer. So I've always been exposed to working with my hands, and i've always loved it.

The turning point to becoming an engineer was probably when i walked for the first time through the doors at Rutgers and saw the 98 competition. I was amazed and knew thats what i wanted to do. I joined my high-school team when i got into highschool, and now I'm a senior and hopefully(know by the 15th) :crossing fingers: whether i get in to college for ME.