What are your victories?

[GreyingJay]

Originally Posted by Navid Shafa

These are the people that this program truly hits the ball home for. Seeing kids come into this program, incapable of interacting with others in a social setting (often extremely gifted), given the opportunity to learn, grow and mature in a safe and friendly environment...

Working with some of these kids has definitely been one of my biggest victories too.

I really wish that FIRST and FRC were around when I was in high school (well, they technically were, in 1992-1996, but certainly not in my region). I was exactly that kid. Intellectually gifted, socially stunted. I actually dreamed of building a robot - I had notebooks full of design sketches and schematics. In grade 9 I went to the school library, borrowed a book about microprocessor architectures, and proceeded to sketch a schematic of a basic Z80-based computer at the IC level (a gazillion parallel wires for the address and data buses, etc.) I wanted to build it, but my biggest setback was the high cost of an EEPROM programmer.

That's the kind of nerd I was. I was also a tall and uncoordinated teenager. People saw my height and assumed I would be good at basketball, but quickly learned otherwise. I was first pick... once.

Back then, kids like me (into geekery, not varsity sports) were beaten up in the locker room. Today, it's "You like robots? You should totally join this FRC team!". I think that is a huge victory.