QotW [4-27-03]: Colleges and FIRST Teams

[WernerNYK]

Ok so here's my story:

In 2000 and 2001, prior to my high school having a team, about 20 of us attended the Long Island regional on the Friday afternoon. I thought it was great, but at the same time felt overwhelmed that our school could possibly do anything like that.

Finally in 2002, my senior year of high school, we started our team. I became the student leader of the team and by the time the season was over I was without a doubt a self-proclaimed "FIRST-a-holic." It was at this point that I decided that I would not attend a college without a team. This eliminated a few schools I had applied to, and my final list consisted of WPI, RIT, and Cornell.. in that order.

After all was said and done, I decided to come here, to WPI in Worcester, Mass. I really liked the "WPI Plan," the way in which academics are approached; it is unlike any other school that I know of in the country. With it being only my first year participating in FIRST, I did some research and discovered that team 190 had a pretty impressive background... founding team, won a lot of awards, won the LI regional the year before (I remembered them when I found out they were the crazy team travelling with a pet hamster), and attended LOTS of off-season competitions. Recognizing that they were one of the more influential teams in FIRST, it was everything that I was looking for in a team. So my decision to choose WPI was well paid-off.

Then in June, after much convincing, our rookie team came to BattleCry@WPI for another chance at battle, and saw how great of a show was put on by the WPI team; I was thoroughly impressed with the school, the team, and the past robots. Now, I am here as my first year on 190 and I must say it is completely different from being on a rookie team. I imagine that it would be different even for seasoned veterans. Switching from a HS mentality to that of being a mentor in the matter of just a few months is much harder than it may actually seem. I believe that I adjusted well, and it is quite enjoyable to be a mentor on this team.