FIRST Alumni: How's College Going?

[Shrub]

Graduated in 2015, just transferred to a new school. I'll be in my second year of college. I'm not really sure what I'm doing right now, but it's pretty far from STEM - I'm looking at cultural/ethnic studies. I wanted to go into Chemistry for two weeks and then I took precalc and there went that dream. I just finished a 12 week summer internship in the city I live in where I was placed in a public school office and did community event outreach.

My freshman year, I took a break from robots and volunteered at one event. This was probably best for my mental and physical health. My freshman year was my first time living away from home and it was a pretty weird transition on top of going to college and having to cook for myself. Being in FRC isn't something you have to continue doing in college - I know plenty of people who didn't. I'd strongly recommend taking a break. I was in a ton of student groups that were housed in my school's Multicultural Center since thats where I felt safe. I plan to continue that at my new school.

I'm currently in between mentoring for two local FRC teams in the area on top of doing primarily FTC volunteering. I also got to participate in Ri3D which was super fun and recently gave a presentation on diversity/inclusion in robotics that went super well.

My advice: bad grades aren't the end of the world. I had a really tough time transitioning from high school to college and ended the year with a less-than-stellar GPA. Take your time, retake classes in the summer if you have to have that dazzling above 3.5 GPA (or need the class), and withdraw a class if you have to. They give you that option for a reason. Also, minor in something fun! Take classes outside your comfort zone for your prerequisites - I took a Women's Studies class for a credit on technology and it was super fun.