FIRST is working

[patrickrd]

I was thinking about FIRST, as I often do, on my way home today, and realized that FIRST truly is having a profound effect on what I consider to be my generation (current HS students and college students and recent graduates). Throughout my past few years in College, I have run into countless people that did FIRST in high school. My best (and conservative) estimate would be about 50, from every corner of the country and Canada. Most of these students are very bright and have good ideas of what they want to do with their life. They are above the campus norm.

But recently in the past year, it has seemed I am running into FIRST people everywhere on campus. A good percentage of the students that applied to Cornell's Robocup team last year had all done FIRST, or at the least heard of it.

Today, I happened to be walking through the corridors of one of our engineering buildings, where a campus tour was taking place. As I began swatting all these gnats out of the way and making my way through the crowd, I hear "Were you on 217?" I then noticed I was wearing a bright green ThunderChickens shirt. Several people, all knowing that these numbers meant FIRST without anybody mentioning FIRST, were now talking to me, not paying attention to the tour guide, to find out what team I've been on. When I mentioned that we have a team in Ithaca, I could see the student's face light up with approval.

I have met a couple of my closest friends, too, simply by running into their familiar FIRST shirts.

Anyway, I am sure some of you have similar situations where you are in environments where FIRST people are all over the place. Do any engineers out there run into other young engineers who did FIRST in high school or college? Other interesting stories?

I am excited to see all these FIRST people around, and looking forward to see how the world twists and turns when we're all in the work place. I can't help but hope and expect that the world is about to become -- at least to some degree -- a better place.

- Patrick

[sanddrag]

I don't have any really great stories like yours but I did see someone from 980 in Office Depot and someone from 589 walking down the street. That's about all I've got.

[Ashley Weed]

I had a simialr experience at WPI.. when I was taken to their build site on a tour.. and someone in the front said "Whoa! Look at that robot!" I checked it out, and started giving about a 20 min. lecture on it.

Also, I was in hooters in Binghamton this spring, and someone was wearing a Championship 2003 shirt.... quite possibly a member of Ithaca or the Norwich team... wish I had asked. *chicken*

I have therapy about every other day... I spend half the time in therapy.. and half the time gabbing about FIRST to my therapist.

[ChrisH]

I think it will take a while to reach the kind of saturation you're talking about Patrick. I work at a large defense contractor. I've worked there 20+ years and due to layoffs etc. most of my co-workers are older than I am.

Though we are now starting to hire people straight out of school, FIRST hasn't been around here on the West Coast long enough to have many graduates running around.

On the other hand, I know one manager who specifically looks for FIRST experience when hiring. He just doesn't find that many applicants. Four or five years ago when FIRST was starting out here, we must have had a whole 30 or 40 graduates to spread around one of the most populated areas of the country. It's no surprise they're hard to find.

I have only run into one other engineer who was on a FIRST team that I didn't meet first at an event. He was a Lockheed guy in the Ft Worth area that was on JSF for a while. He's changed programs so I don't hear from him anymore.

[WernerNYK]

Hahah, yes... As Ashley mentioned above, FIRST is a very big thing on the WPI campus. It is the largest student organization, and 1 out of every 5 college freshman (about 150 people) sign up for the team at the new student orientation/activities fair. Now, do all those people actually remain on the team? No, of course not... but the initial interest was there (and most of that initial interest is from people who have been on previous teams).

Without going into much more detail than that (I could say sooo much more, heh), I'd like to tell a little anecdote:

So a few of us had gathered on the bottom floor of the campus center waiting for everyone else for our scheduled cabinet meeting. As more and more people show up, we see one of the WPI Police officers riding around on a Segway. He spots us, realizing that we are on the robotics team and rides over to have a chat with us.

Topics ranged from our current robot, to past years, to Segway (what else would there be to talk about? hehe). Anyway, the officer tells us that he was at the YMCA the other day and he happened to be wearing a "WPI" t-shirt. One of the people there approached him and asked, "So you're from WPI?" He told the fellow that he is a cop there, yes. The man then said, "Oh. So have you seen their FIRST robot? I attended a demo at the library with my kids a few months ago; that thing is AMAZING!"

It was quite a humbling experience to realize that people are actually beginning to recognize what FIRST is, and even talk about it 'on the street.' Makes ya feel good that doing 50+ demos/yr are having an impact.

[Yan Wang]

Yeah, I run into goofy Cornell people like you, Patrick

Actually, in 2002, I went to the Materials Camp (hosted by ASM) in Cleveland, Ohio (hometown) - one guy there, Omar, was on one of the championship alliances that year. I recognized him from briefly seeing him in nationals. One of the mentors for the camp was also wearing a FLL judge shirt from the championships (I also saw him in Orlando).

Hm, Pat - make sure you tell those freshmen to JOIN our team I haven't the time to go walking around campus around confused freshmen (wait, how come these streets change names halfway down... and why are all the roads so curvy???).

[compgamer5]

.... I know that through-out the years I've noticed more and more student organizations get ivolved with FIRST and helping out in any way possible.

As being the VP on PolyBOTS (Robotics organization in Poly dedicated to FIRST) I can tell you that it's great when you get to work with other organizations and helping to recruit more and more people into the FIRST "experience".

Hopefully FIRST will be able to grow more and more throughout the years in the same manner!!!



PolyBOTS website

[Rich Wong]

Originally posted by ChrisH

On the other hand, I know one manager who specifically looks for FIRST experience when hiring. He just doesn't find that many applicants. Four or five years ago when FIRST was starting out here, we must have had a whole 30 or 40 graduates to spread around one of the most populated areas of the country. It's no surprise they're hard to find.

Last year I hired a FIRST student for Summer Internship and he is still working for us.
This year I hired another FIRST student for Summer Internship and I planning to keep him on as a full-time intern.
FIRST students make really great interns and employees.
We now look for the candidate involved with FIRST as a benchmark for internship.

[BandChick]

I would tell this story, but there's no way it would be as good as hearing straight from the source's mouth, so ask SarahB about her run-in at Clarkson.

(or JVN)

[SarahB]

Originally posted by BandChick
I would tell this story, but there's no way it would be as good as hearing straight from the source's mouth, so ask SarahB about her run-in at Clarkson.

*giddy laugh* I get to tell the story now!

A week or two before IRI, I was visiting Clarkson as part of the grand college tour thing that my mom’s been so obsessive with this summer. We were on a campus tour and when we got to the machine shop our tour guide turned us over to the one and only JVN(but I didn’t know this at the time). He’s showing us around and I keep asking questions about FIRST, since it was what got me interested in FIRST. Finally he shows us the robot and I start obsessing and asking all sorts of questions while he tries to explain FIRST to the rest of the group. Finally we started talking about Chief Delphi and I found out who he was and I sort of went crazy. I was really excited because his posts here were what really made me take a second look at Clarkson, and yeah… I really wasn’t expecting to meet him. I think I ended up really freaking him and the tour guide out, but that’s ok.

Now that you all think I’m a total stalker, I’ll just stop talking now.

[Erin Rapacki]

lol SarahB, I think you did freak them out. John told me that story at IRI, but I think he really appreciated it too. When people started noticing me at events it was really flattering. (It was something I certainly didn't expect)

I think overall FIRST is definately working. The program may not be turning out as many 'engineers' as they'd like, but I think overall... the students who go through FIRST are doing more with their lives than they may have otherwise. There's no way of changing the course of time to prove this theory, but it's inevitable that in some direct or indirect way... FIRST does make a positive difference.

[Ashley Weed]

FIRST was deffinately acknoweledged by many yesterday. I went to Knoebels Amusement Park in central PA. Since I am ill, I can not do much at all..... so in return my cousins took me around the park all day.. and I would walk up to the rides with them with my cane.....

in return - peopple noticed me.. and moreso... my microswitch necklace.... appx. 15 ride operators... and 20+ other guests received FULL explanations of FIRST!


/me is deff. a FIRST missionary