Elite (invite only) FIRST teams

[SL8]

Originally Posted by HOT_SOUP

I understand. I personally would not have such a hard core system as what you are talking about, but I no longer think it would be against First principles.

I say, go for it.

as do I. It may one day become a norm.

[theycallhimtom]

I'm really concerned with the amount of time it takes to start a team. Its hard to commit to that much time as a college freshman anyway here is my experience.

I'm a college freshman now and over the end of my Senior year through the fall of my freshman year I started a business and basically put all of my free time into it. Around the winter of my freshman year I got to travel to Seattle because of the business and finally had a couple people willing to pay me. I absolutely loved what I was doing, but there were so many other exciting things at college. I basically didn't have enough hours in the day to do everything that I want. In the end the business was great, but I couldn't keep it up. I don't regret the decision at all because now I have a ton of other great things going on in my life.

My work load in college is less then in high school (my high school kind of prides itself of giving out a 4.0 about once every 10 years), but I find I have much less free time because there are so many exciting things to do on campus. So my recommendation is to wait a year at least before dedicating a large portion of your time to anything. But having said that in the end you have to do what you really want to do. Starting a business during my freshman year wasn't the smartest thing, but if I hadn't done it I would probably still be spending ever moment thinking about it.

[HOT_SOUP]

Originally Posted by rachal

Personally, I never would have known I was interested in (or talented at, relatively) engineering if I hadn't done FIRST. What you're doing is starting up an uber-team just for kicks, which is awesome for competent FIRST veterans still in high school who have gotten too fed up with their original teams to work with them, but completely skips over the whole teamwork-and-get-kids-interested-in-science thing.

Woohoo, that makes two of us that think that!

[xitaqua]

Hello All,

This is a very interesting thread. I have to agree with the folks here that mention the whole point is getting students interested in engineering.

The challenge we (mentors) have found is how can we participate "hands-on" without creating a "elite team", the solution a group of employees came up with was to start a "demo team". We are comprised entirely of industry folks, we used the same 2008 FIRST robotics as a "start" and we have added some other stuff to the robot (eg. non first equipment). The robot is not for competition instead it is to bring awareness of FIRST within the company and in the community. It gives an opportunity for mentors to have a feel what the students go thru. It is about mentors teaching mentors.

FIRST is about the relationships you build. ONE individual at a time.

Cheers,
Marcos.