Why did you join FIRST?

[EricH]

Originally Posted by SamC

The robotics team is basically the only extracurricular at my school so I always knew about it. But then I found out that you got to go on trips for the competitions, so I joined. After the first year I returned not only for the traveling but mainly for the robots and different learning opportunities.

And, as I recall, we not only roped you in, but your dad, and your brother is waiting his time to join...

[harleywhite]

Because my mom told me to... kind of.

I've been around the Bomb Squad since 2001 (I think) so I pretty much grew up with the team. (FIRST is a way of life at my house.) I have always known I would be on the team one way or another and there was no escaping. So after a year and a half of being in FIRST officially, I am pretty much addicted.

[Chris is me]

I was about to write a massive post until I realized it became my entire first history. So here's the shorter version.

In 2006, my "house parent" (live in mentor at a boarding school I went to) wanted me to try out robotics, so I joined the FVC team the school started. We ran into our share of problems, but what really got me going was the competition. The frenzy of scrambling to get our robot together, then helping out other teams witht he same problems while talking to a wide variety of kids was amazing. We ended up being 8th seed and losing right away.

It's what motivated me to start a team with my friend and my dad in 2007, FTC 63 "The Rebels". The idea is that we both left our boarding school for various reasons, so we were joining to compete with them (that and our love of the competition). We really had no idea what we were doing, so we showed up with a barely working robot. My teammate and I had a fight and she quit while I proceeded to take apart our robot to try and salvage the chassis.

At this point, a team I helped out from Wisconsin Lutheran High came by and helped me out. I was 5 seconds from quitting and they wouldn't let me. Finally we got the four wheeled... thing on the field and I ended up helping out in every match with strategy. I was the third pick of the 1st seed alliance and long story short I qualified for Atlanta entirely because of the brilliant amazing kids in Wisconsin Lutheran.

Right there I knew that I couldn't quit FIRST, it was WAY too much fun. Luckily, one of the event volunteers was on an FRC team with Vex parts so they agreed to let me use theirs to compete in Atlanta. Long story short, everything in Atlanta went wrong, but I had fun the whole way through, and then the FRC team invited me to join them for 2008-9 I just couldn't say no. Every single hour long drive to the shop is worth it.

[Abra Cadabra IV]

I actually got dragged into FIRST through Girl Scouts. About mid-2007, I got a flyer in the mail advertising a robotics program for girls. It was mostly targeting FLL-age kids (there's a zillion Girl Scout FLL teams in the area) but it did have something for people my age. My mother convinced me to apply to join, and I went along with it, thinking that it would be another generic activity that would be over in a month or two.

That "something" turned out to be one of the first Girl Scout FTC teams - Team 25, the Rock-n-Roll Robots. That first year, we had 7 girls and 3 mentors. One of the girls was a former member of Robodox, and one of the mentors was a former member of WildStang. Nobody else had much FIRST experience or (in the case of the girls, myself included, any robotics or engineering experience whatsoever) any robotics experience whatsoever. We had a rough start in the beginning, placing dead last in our first competition, but after a huge re-design we went on to take 2nd place at two regionals plus winning the Inspire Award (equivalent to Chairman's in FTC) and qualifying for Atlanta. And then when we got to Atlanta, not only did we win an award, we also ended up taking second place.

That something inspired me to join my school's rookie FRC team the same year. That was a whole different experience; we had trouble with mentors and funding and our first year was not so great, but we won the Rookie All-Star Award at our regional and in the process got inspired by all the other teams out there.

That something opened up a whole new world for me. It let me find something I love to do, and it let me make friends and it let me be part of FIRST, something which I will never give up.

Things have come a long way since then; 2429 was proud to be a picking alliance at Los Angeles this year (even if we did lose in the first round), while Rock-n-Roll is coming back to Atlanta after being a strong force at every regional we've attended. And I am so incredibly glad that I got that flyer in the mail.

[Meredith Novak]

Originally Posted by harleywhite

Because my mom told me to...

Oh, she's never done anything her mom told her to

The reason her mom got involved and "forced" the FIRST lifestyle on all 3 of her kids is more interesting:

The nicest man in the world told me he wouldn't be a very good husband because he had "a thing for robots." Not to be deterred by this admittedly bizarre attempt to avoid commitment, I decided to investigate this "hobby" of his. He even signed me up to volunteer at our FLL tournament the weekend before our wedding. It was about the most fun I had ever had...poor guy...

[ezygmont708]

I wish that I had the opportunity to join a FIRST team in High School. My senior year I found out that such a thing existed, but it was only open to students taking specific courses.

I did however have a few friends on the team... And did some material "acquisitions" for them. I was working as a computer technician at a machine shop at the time.

I started working for that same High School about two years ago. When I got the job they asked me if I would be interested in sponsoring the team, as no other teachers or employees were interested in sponsoring the team.

I am now at the point where I spend 40 hours at work a week, and probably another 25-30 hours per week on robotics. We are currently trying to take a barely functioning program, and reconstruct it into a world class organization. As you all know these things don't happen over night.

We are especially thankful to our sponsors:
MOTOROLA
CENTOCOR
Hatboro-Horsham Education Foundation
Upper Moreland Education Foundation

I deeply enjoy seeing students who are enthusiastic about their prospects, and work hard to accomplish their goals. That is why I am an adviser for TEAM 708 - Hardwired Fusion.

[jamie_1930]

My Dad use to take me to the Finger Lakes Regional every year, and although I didn't get it that much then as soon as I was a freshman I grabbed five of my friends and told them the have to come to this meeting, four of them are now ending their second year in the program.

[Boydean]

I believe it was in 2004(FIRST Frenzy). My dad came home and was talking about it after hearing about FIRST(and the Palmetto Regional) on the radio. He then pulled the site up and watched the promo video. I fell in love with that video and showed it to everyone I knew.

When we went to the Palmetto regional a few weeks later, we fell in love with it and then took a trip to Championships. The following year my dad decided to start a FLL team(I was in 6th grade) with three of my friends.

That first year we got the name "Cyber Storm" and moved with two years of FLL, a year with FVC(now FTC) and last year the was the first time being in FRC.

With being the first FIRST team in our town, and my dad pushing the whole thing. What has now grown into two FLL teams and pretty well known FRC team in our community, with my dad pushing the whole thing forward; volunteering at anytime and mentoring FLL teams, I can't imagine life with out FIRST.

ps. To this date FIRST Frenzy still has a special place in my heart, for being the first game I ever saw.

[NorviewsVeteran]

My first exposure to the organization was when I was 7 or so, it was the game with the purple playground balls that fell from over the driver stations. My mom called me into the room where she had the TV on the channel that was showing a regional, "It's robots!" I went in, saw the kids driving them and said, "neh, they're not fighting." (Yes, I'm guilty of it)

In 5th grade, I got picked up from school to go over to my brother's middle school where they had an FLL team (I had no idea what was going on in there), but I hung out with them, helped build their field, and ended up going to a competition with them (they didn't do too hot).

I went to a different middle school, one without a team, but there was a robotics class, so I was set. In 8th grade, I was interested in 3D animation and such, so My mom took me over to Norview, where my brother was in their FRC team. I didn't watch him, though, I hung out with Paul Jones (he goes to JMU now) but I gravitated to the shop where they were building stuff (I grew up on Legos). Not only that, but the robotics class they had there used VEX, and at some point I picked up the controller for one and was instantly deemed a driver (too bad I wasn't a high school student) because I was carefully driving the bot through table legs, over shoes, between legs, etc.

Over the course of it all, I was in the 'gifted' program (was mysteriously dropped from the list), dabbled in TSA (wasn't thrilled with the leadership at the school), and offered a spot at the technical center. You won't hear me complain the one I stuck with. My mom brought up the interesting point that I've done more leading than the LCSE (Leadership group at Norview) and we both thought that's pretty funny.

[santosh]

I missed the bus and wound up at a meeting

[keehun]

I took part in Team 2502's rookie year. The senior who had started the team left for MIT so basically, a bunch of freshmen and juniors were left with the job of making the team's second year as successful as possible. I saw the chance and grasped the opportunity to lead the team and program our robot. I'm one of the team leaders with 2 other sophomores and a senior. Our regional is in 4 days! I am so excited to see the fruits of the work of the second year team.

I must say, the senior leaving and me trying to fill his gap taught me a lot and gave me a ton of challenges, but also glued me to the team

[MasterRobot]

I joined FIRST when one day I got a call from the parent who coordinated FLL. Apparently an old tech teacher from my elementary school was good friends with her and suggested that I might be a good addition to the team. The following year I was able to lead a FLL team that was able to go to Atlanta after winning our regional.
Thanks to this parent, and the success of the FLL teams, the administration of the team took more notice and thanks to them and Hawaii embracing robotics for the new FRC regional, a FRC team was created. I was lucky enough to move from FLL to FRC during that year, showing me the diversity of programs FIRST offers and how amazing they all are.

[waialua359]

May 1999-in my high school library, looking at a Cheesy Poof Rookie robot with Jason Morella and 2 students from Broadway HS.
Some other teacher told me to come check out this thing called FIRST Robotics.

[Bomberofdoom]

Our future-Mentor came to our school (pretty late, actually, in the end of December) and introduced the FRC to my class, explaining that the project involves mechanics, physics and programming, which of course, I was interested in.
I was about to start a programming project with another friend, related to image processing, but we weren't give too much help, so I thought that programming a robot and not a program on a computer would be much more fun and challenge.
When I saw my other team mates joining, I thought to myself that I was better than them in programming (guilty , but I really was) so I decided to volunteer for being the programming team leader.

I wanted to join the program because I saw this as an oppurtunity to experince first-hand, in high school, on how to work in a high-tech buissness.
There was no other place for me to expereince this, and I knew that this project would deffiantly give me something for the future.
That's why the following year I was the CEO of the team.

[Jimmy Nichols]

Jan 2004 I overheard a group of students talking about their senior design project working with this group of kids on a robot. I thought that would be awesome and I would love to do that. They said it was really hard to get the as your senior design. The next year, 2005, I wasn't able to get on that group, until one of the guys on the group called and said they were dropping it for something else. I swooped and in and the rest is history