How We Could've Changed the Culture But Didn't.

[Jeremy Roberts]

First of all I would like say I am proud to have M. Krass and Ken L. speaking out and representing us college students so eloquently. As a relative unknown on CD I have been reading this thread and have been debating whether to add my piece. So much has been said already that echoes many of my own thoughts and feelings. I guess the first place to start so you have a better idea where I am coming from is to tell you a bit about my FIRST experience. (I know this thread is a lot of reading so you may skip the next 2 paragraphs if you wish. They give some quick insight into my FIRST experience so far. Bear with me on this; I’ll keep it short)

I started my FIRST journey in 1998 at Ely High School in Pompano Beach, FL on Team 132. The first year our team consisted of approximately 15 students and one teacher and a perpetually drunk machinist sponsor. During build period we worked night and day building our robot for the competition, but not much else. There was a team structure and the team’s spirit was great however all the other elements that make FIRST what it is were missing for me in high school. With literally no engineering mentorship I now find that, and believe, that it is a must have for any team. Now don’t get me wrong, a team can be student run and student built and still be successful, however I know looking back I would have liked more mentorship and guidance when I was in high school. (Oh by the way, we did eventually drop him as a sponsor after incidents involving alcohol at the competition.)

That said, I still enjoyed the program so much that I and another student from my high school went to Georgia Tech and began the process of starting what was then to be the only team in the state. I must admit that a large part of my reason initially for starting a team was to try to give to those students an opportunity I thought I had missed out on. This as you can probably guess is not the right mentality. A small team was formed in 2001 at a local, predominantly minority, school consisting of a handful of high school student a teacher and a small group of eager college mentors. In short, the first year was a failure and a success wrapped in one. We had pushed so hard to start a team (got the funding and everything through Tech) that even though early on when we realized that the teacher did not want to put the time in to help run the team we continued to pushed forward. The team did not make it passed its first year and my and a couple other dedicated FIRSTers grades suffered for that semester. This really discouraged me and I spent many months thereafter wondering how a teacher, someone who has the job of inspiring and teaching young minds, could be so blatantly uncaring about the future of their students. So, how could this have been a good thing? The silver lining to this story is that this team and its robot gave us the stepping stone we needed to encourage more participation and involvement from the college itself.

From that experience I learned that no matter how much you want someone to see and feel FIRST the way you do, you cannot force them. All you can do is be a positive influence and let others see the way FIRST can change a person’s life though you.

Fast forwarding to the present day we are up to 15 teams in Georgia and all over the nation and internationally FIRST is growing at an accelerated rate. I believe this growth is indicative of the culture change that M. Krass spoke about even though, I believe, the change is still mostly contained within FIRST circles (teams and their sponsors). Groups such as WRRF are slowly but surely instigating this culture change around their area. All we can do as individuals, teams, or college organizations is to work on making the change in our area, even if that is only reaching out and changing the life of 1 student, parent or mentor who in turn will hopefully continue the cycle.

On the flip side there are some that see this growth and push for more and more teams as a bad thing that will eventually create in essence a watered-down FIRST. This combined with Dean’s push to create a more TV friendly and flashy FIRST has many people worried about where FIRST might be heading. On this I agree with Ken when he made the statement, “One of the more effective ways of accomplishing that is to work with the system, not change the system right away.” Dean is walking a tightrope with FIRST. On one side he is trying to get the public more aware of its existence while at the same time maintaining the essence of what FIRST really about. I think so far he is doing a good job.

Well, I have rambled on enough and I’m not sure I added anything new, but I just thought I’d say hi and add a couple of my thoughts to the pot.