FIRST Alumni: How's College Going?

[Ian Curtis]

Perspective Post-College:

I graduated from high school in 2009 & ended up at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. I majored in Aeronautical Engineering, and while I was there my extracurricular was AIAA Design/Build/Fly . We built an R/C airplane every year to compete in the AIAA sponsored challenge, but we built many other airplanes to entertain ourselves up in our lab. I spent the summer following my first year working at a local museum, mostly pushing paperwork for their annual classic car consignment auction. The summer after that I was an intern at Boeing Commercial Airplanes working in aerodynamics. I followed Chris Pinecone to approximately two 2791 meetings, but mostly just watched FRC from along from the sidelines.

After I graduated in 2012, I came back to BCA full time. I reached out to FIRSTWA & got connected with 1778, and now I've been here so long all the freshman from my first year on the team have graduated. If you take a break from FIRST in college, don't worry about having a hard time finding a team to help out down the line. Anyone with questions about RPI/Boeing/Not doing FIRST in college/etc, shoot me a PM.