Why are YOU involved in FIRST?

[Hubicki]

One of my friends recruited me for my Sophomore year. At the time, I only joined for the cool robot aspect. It seemed like something cool and a few of my friends decided to join too. Of course, someone in charge decided to stick me onto Animation, Chairmans', Woodie Flowers, amd every minor award available. I wasn't too happy with this because I had become THE 'goto' guy for everything that noone wanted to do. It was only after my first year that I actually read to Chairmans' criteria and was 'enlightened' to what FIRST was all about. And at the Maryland State Fair Tournment, I was the lead strategist, and I decided to do that ever since. Now, I'm on the team to make sure that it succeeds in every possible way that it can. Of course, it doesn't hurt your college resume either. But i wouldn't give up on FIRST for the world now.
~Hubicki~

[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

[Eria4044]

A friend of mine, who's a year older than me, was on the school's robotics team his freshman year. My freshman year (this year), he persuaded me into joining.

My sister was in it from 1998 (99ish) to 2002 and i would go to liek all comps and nats and i loved it. so i joined when i got in high school. i also like doing hand on things liek building and stuff. and you also meet alot of cool people and stuff