FIRST Alumni: How's College Going?

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Originally Posted by 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.

Nice! I too went to RPI (graduated in 2008) and was a member of Design Build Fly 2006-08, ended up at Boeing as well (but in BDS southern California). Did participate in FRC in college, however, as part of the Introduction to Engineering Design class (IED) with Larry Ruff and then again as a mentor for Albany High School.

Funny how people end up following similar paths!