Reasons For Being Interested in Engineering, Programming, and what not

[Ian Curtis]

For as long as I can remember there was a magnet on my parents' fridge that said "Engineers: Superior by Design."

I certainly had a lot of parental influences towards engineering too. I got a MINDSTORMS kit when they came out (I think my Dad liked playing with it more than me though), and was on an FLL team the first year I was eligible. Since the local FRC team was desperate for mentors (and my Dad would only do it if I got to come along), I got started FRC in 7th grade.

I got into airplanes because I grew up next to an airport, and there's a museum that let me work on the planes. Now I'm a semester and a half away from working full time in aerodynamics on airplanes that are 500 times bigger.

Robots aren't the only kind of engineering, I think this kind of gets lost on FIRST kids sometimes.