Starting a college team

[mtrawls]

Thanks for all the input in this thread! I don't plan to start a team my Freshman year, only start talking about it and get people (university, high school, etc.) interested in the idea and get some people to go to the VCU regional hopefully ... and then I'll think about starting the team during my second year. Obviously it all depends on how things go, and if I've gotten myself in over my head with just the triple major itself ...

Why do you want to start a new team?

Is it because you love teaching others? Is it because you want to help change the future of society? Or is it because you're going to miss building and designing a robot?

This is my third year on my team and I've gotten to know quite a bit, I'm proud to say. As such, this year for me I acted mainly as a "mentor," directing other students to do the work and showing them how (though I did end up doing the programming, but that was due to lack of student interest). It was hard not to pick up something and do it myself, especially when I knew I could have done it quicker/better ... but I reminded myself that I had to learn all these things when I started, and teaching the others how to do it really was a different experience. From what I hear about being a college mentor, I imagine I will like the new role even more. No, it's not because I'm going to miss building and designing a robot (there're other engineering challenges my university offers that I'll explore), but it's because of what FIRST is all about -- because instead of building a robot, I want to learn to build a team, to help other people bulid a robot. I don't know that I can really articulate the reason, but FIRST has affected my life so deeply that I want to give that chance to others. It is such a great program that I want to see it spread. I don't know, maybe I'm crazy ... Well, there's no maybe about it ... but that's another story.