Why are YOU involved in FIRST?

[petek]

I became involved in FIRST because of:

a) A mistake;
b) A Grasshopper;
c) Good manners;
d) Dave Beck.

The mistake: When my daughter joined Cybersonics her freshman year, I purposely stayed away - to let her find her place and have fun without me being around. That wasn't a mistake, but going to the J&J regional that year was. At least it was a good one!

The Grasshopper: I had just sat down in my seat in the upper deck of the College Ave gym as a match started. When Grasshopper came off the wall and went down the side of the field and scooped up every ball in the line, the whole house jumped to their feet cheering. I'm not sure which impressed me more: the robot or the "gracious professionalism" shown by competitors screaming their heads off for its performance.

Good manners: I was not prepared for what I saw when I went into the student center for lunch with members of 30-odd teams and their fans. I was expecting it to be like it would if it had been 30 (or even three) basketball teams. Those FIRST kids were actually polite! There was plenty of rivalry, but all good-natured. And no four-letter words. It was as if everyone saw themselves as part of a really huge family. Like they really wanted to be there. How cool is that?

Dave Beck: Dave likes to fish - not just for trout, either. He knows what kind of bait to use and, once he gets a nibble, just how to hook them and reel them in. His bait: high school robotics. The hook: students - 35 at Palisades HS (and thousands more around the world). He gave me just enough encouragement and pulled just hard enough to let me get myself thoroughly hooked on FIRST. I didn't stand a chance.

[dubious elise]

year-round tennis was starting to wear on me (i've cut back to only 3 consecutive seasons ) and i had heard loads about it from they guys that i had been in science classes with for the past 2 years

[Spammy Badame]

I joined because both of my older sisters joined. Ever since i was really little my oldest sister has been my role model. She's the reason I'm playing trumpet now. But after one of her competitions (i believe the first one she went to) she came home saying how amazing it was and what-not. Since my parents both worked, and robotics was late, my younger sister and i would go with my mom to pick her up (this was lexie year). but we would go inside and see how helpful elizabeth was and how much she enjoyed it, and every once in a while we would have to go to the pit with her because my dad was out of town and my mom was working late and she was our only ride, so i would go and play with the bouncy balls. Then teresa joined, and she wouldn't tell us anything about it, but i saw all the dorky necklaces and other things she brought home.
so then i joined, i met a bunch of people, was told to sweep a lot, didn't do a whole lot on building the robot the first year, but i helped a lot with the crate and our cart. then, at regionals, i was on pit crew, and that just blew my mind. i had soo much fun there. and then, of course, sophomore year, i "met" (made friends with i guess is more what it should be called) my famous pit buddy, tiff. i did a lot on the robot and still had a super fun time.
Then, i got the date for robot rodeo, and realized that the date didn't conflict with band, like it had in the past, and i was super excited. then i got my cross country schedule and found out that robot rodeo is the same day as districts. so i quit cross country. now i'm going to be a mentor on a FLL team, and i went to our girls camp over the summer, and i'm vice president (along with britt) of our the south florida chapter of the RCU, and i'm finding more and more that robotics is life. I mean, i used to say that, but now i really know that full meaning of it. I can't wait until Robot Rodeo!!! or kickoff! or regionals!!! or nationals!!!!!! this year is gonna be great!

(sorry, that was kinda long, but i really meant it)

[spears312]

because its my anti-drug?

Actually I don't really know specifically why I joined FIRST, probably the fact of building robots and such. But I can say that I haven't regretted a single second so far.

[Aignam]

My sister told me all the geeks were in the Robotics Club. I was there so fast you wouldn't believe.

[KathieK]

I had heard about FIRST for many years since I worked for the UTC division that sponsors RAGE. When my son was in 8th grade we attended the UTC Regional and were blown away by the excitement. My husband and I attended his first team meeting as a freshman and have only missed one or two meetings since (much to my son's dismay).

Once I saw the positive effect the program has on students who might otherwise not be a part of anything in high school, I was hooked.

My goal this past year was to increase communications to parents, school administrators and town officials and I believe I have accomplished that.
My goal this year is to further advertise NEMO (non-engineering mentor organization) to FIRST team mentors and to organize workshops on FIRST team non-engineering topics at regional competitions.

[Mike]

Ever since I can remember, I've always tried "inventing" or engineering new things using whatever there was available. Then when I was about 10 or so my family got it's first computer, and I found out that I could "invent" (program) stuff on the computer without any limitation of physical materials. This is just taking a step up from making things on a computer run, to making things on a physical object run... via a computer.

Basically: engineering is fun.

[zdeswarte]

Me and my friends got kinda sick of our Halo LAN parties so we started the FIRST robotics club thing at my school. Its my engineering independent study now, too. So I get to screw around with the robot for like 2 hours during school and get high school credit for it. Its a pretty good deal if you ask me... Plus my instructor is also my team mentor so he usually grades me generously

[Bcahn836]

I got involved in FIRST from my lead mentor Dave Buddenbohn. I took his class for 7 weeks in an exploratory program, he saw my interest in Engineering and asked me to come to one of the Robotics meetings. So I joined at the end of the teams rookie season and since then have become the leader of the team. I think i have stayed interested because the opportunities given to me through FIRST, from meeting interesting intelligent people, learning about Engineering and Gracious professionalism, to the career and education possibilities through sponsors and scholarships. FIRST has given me a reason and directing to go to college and further my education.

[Jay Trzaskos]

I joined FIRST purely for the knowledge and friendships i could and have gained from the experiences. i am now only a high school sophomore but i feel i have grown so much from the positive experience that is FIRST. I am now part of drive team/pit crew and last year i was on pit crew. i have learned so much and i still have two years of high school left. I will probably also join a team in college (I'm still not sure if i can stand 8 years on 229 and i know i won't be able to spend college in Potsdam, New York )

[Erin Rapacki]

I just want to give-back to a program that gave so much to me (in every way). Note testimonial in this thread:

http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/sh...+test imonial

[Denman]

originally i joined because i had to do an activity "outside school "(school policy, they called it enrichment, and every wednesday afternoon is off for it)
but now i am staying for most of the reasons mentioned above.

[Dan-o]

I originally joined FIRST when I was first introduced to the program when mentors and students from team 365 (MOE) put on a demonstration at my high school.... some 20 miles away from their home base. The team was looking for prospective members for their 2003 season. I had already known that I wanted to go into robotics, so I jumped at the opportunity to learn more about the field, and play with futuristic machines in a national competition.

I soon found out that FIRST was about so much more than building a machine. After going to many meetings, the build season started, and I was bombarded with slogans like gracious professionalism, of which i though I understood. The build season came to an end and our bot was shipped away in a crate. This almost made me cry. I had grown so attached to this thing that I had poured my heart and soul into for 6 short weeks. I have never felt such a sense of accomplishment in my life as the day that bot finally worked. This feeling of pride emitted itself from my being weeks after the competition season ended.

I'm overlapping here... Annapolis regional in 2003 was not my first competition experience, as I had traveled to several off-season competitions with the 2002 bot, however the scale of this event was unimaginable to me. Almost 70 teams from all over the place were assembled with the projects that they too had poured their heart and soul into. After a few matches pass during the practice day, I see a bot start letting out its magic smoke on the field. One of my team's mentors immediately sent all but one person from my pit crew over to see if there was anything we could do to help. I was thinking... "wait a second... isn't this a competition?.... don't we do better if they do worse?" I followed the pit crew over and saw the burnt robot being worked on by people from at least 4 different teams. Finally, I was introduced to the true meaning of Gracious Professionalism. It didn't matter if they were going to eventually be competing against our team. All that mattered was for them to get the same experience and fun out of the competition that we had. This is why I will probably be involved in FIRST until the day I die.

With all that said (sorry for being so long winded), I am in FIRST because it is one of the very few competitions in which teams are willing to help their opponents, to the extent that they may be sacrificing a win, or even a championship.



P.S. I do like to mentor high school students as well, but that's not what originally grabbed my attention.

[- Raven -]

We have to choose an activity to study which isn't on the standard school curriculum as part of our school course. So I heard word that the school had a Robotics team, and set out to find out more. Liked what I heard n' saw when I got there, so I jumped straight in and joined.

[Ken Loyd]

Eight years ago, a "wild man" from General Motors came to our high school with the idea of creating a robotics club. After listening to this man for about 4 minutes, I was hooked. Mike Rush, Arizona Woody Flowers Award Winner, thank you!

Ken