Why did you join FIRST?

[MishraArtificer]

I shall tell you a tale, a tale of good and evil, of light and darkness...or not...

Saw a few people working on a robot towards the end of the '03-'04 school year, while waiting for my chance to audition for Symphonic Band at Jefferson High School. Didn't get in, and completely forgot about my first encounter with FIRST.

One of my friends the following school year told me about The Team Formerly Known As Mach Vee, and invited me along to their first meeting of the year. We became TEMPEST Robotics that year, and Triple Play still has a place in my heart, sharing it with a lot of good memories. We all signed the robot that year, putting our names on the parts we worked on.

I still remember my first trip to the Great Lakes Regional. The second-to-last match of the event, Team HOT finally became the first team at the Regional to score a vision tetra on the center goal during autonomous mode, and the whole crowd in the Convocation Center went absolutely NUTS.

I've never looked back.

All these years later, I still try to go to events. I went to the GLR (cough, cough) Michigan State Championships, to show the flag even though my old team didn't qualify. My only regret in the whole of my first career is that I never got to drive the robot at a competition, not even an offseason one. Such is my fortune.

They took apart my robot this year, raiding it for parts. They let me take the piece with my name on it. I thank them for that, and I hope to see them all at MARC, if they're going. If not, I'll be there, in my Team 240 shirt. Or my button mail armor shirt. Maybe I'll finally fill up the ****ed thing.

Good Luck, All!

[ttldomination]

I was a young and eager freshman. I wanted to be in all of the clubs and I wanted to have a shirt for each club.

I like the Robolion's shirt the best so I chose to do robotics. .

Nah, out of honesty, i was determined to do as much as I can and over time i realized that robotics was simply too engaging for me to pass by.

And bam, 3 years later I lead an FTC team, i'm the VP for an FRC team, and i have a great network of peers.

[Katie_UPS]

[Luckyfish05]

How did I get involved in FIRST? Well... Let me share...

First off, you have to understand. My parents are engineers, my grandfathers were engineers, my uncle is an engineers, and many of my guy friends are engineers. Oh yea, my brother's a physics major. Needless to say, me being me, I was bound and determine NOT to be an ENGINEER!

It was my senior year of high school, and my friends (most of them) had been involved for years. I, being a swimmer, didn't see the point of getting involved. I heard robotics competition, and thought what I'm sure most people think that don't know about FIRST, bunch of "geeks" tinkering over these machines and nothing exciting.

Well, then came physics class. I was stuck in a class of everyone being involved in PantherTech except for me and one other person. Physics was actually PantherTech with physics on the side. Watching match videos, getting on CD, and talking about robots, and thunderchickens and who knows what else. Then, all of my friends really started to push to get me to travel with them (I think for some reason that if I went the cost for everyone went down), and I caved.

First competition, music, triple-play matches with the Beast, meeting new people, dancing, and seeing GP in action....

Long story short.... I now bleed FIRST instead of blood. Joined for friends, and five years later, of those friends there are just two of us are still involved. I'm sure no one believed I would be one of those when I started five years ago.

[A-train]

Here is my story:

It all started back in 8th grade when my brother was a junior on the team. I was dragged along to the 2007 Midwest Regional thinking that it was just a big nerd fest. Turns out i was WAY wrong. The music, the team shirts, the game, the field, and lets not forget about the robots, were just awesome! Granted, I wasn't totally hooked because i really loved to run(still do). So, IRI rolls around and I'm brought along again. It was so amazing! I was hooked. My freshman year was awesome and this year was even better! Reasons: 2 regional wins and I was one of two Chairman's Speech presenters which helped win the Midwest Regional Chairman's Award. It was an honor.

And that is my story

[MrFixIt2719]

my story is pretty cool i think it was my freshman year and it was four months before kickoff for triple play 2005 and a mentor from team 240 came to ur school and was talking to some us kids in the engineering class we hold at the school and i was working on the lego robot and he came over and pithched the idea of FIRST and showed me some videos and then a month later we started 1528 so with only two months before kickoff, so we did some research and found out that our administartor was part of team 279 so he help out and we built a descent robot and i was voted drivier and was the drivier for the next three years and now graduated me and the new class advisor started rookie team 2719 and did pretty good with the in class school team so thats my story on how i got started and i have been loving it ever since

[AcesJames]

My story

Being only a Freshman now, I'm still learning why I joined FIRST. Basically, I've been a nerd for as long as I can remember. Everyone around me knows me as one, and it only came natural that when signups for our team came around, some of the people on the team asked me to join, specifically my neighbor, who is now a senior on the team. At first (no pun intended), I wasn't totally excited about the team. I really had no idea what was going on. I went through the shop, learning safety and wiring, and went to a few off season events, not quite knowing what was going on. For a while I was labeled battery boy, or cart kid.

Then at kickoff I got really interested. I analyzed the game animation, came to almost every build season meeting, and finally decided on a sub team, programming. At our first regional this year, I really still didn't quite know what was going on, but after staying up all night finishing the robot prior to our scrimmage, I knew what our robot did. Being a programmer, I stayed in the pits often with the rest of the sub team, and helped with a few things. Our only other programmers are 2 seniors, and another freshman like myself, so I suppose I was being prepped for the full load of code next year.

After the first regional we attended, I think I really understood what FIRST was about, and I fully understood the game, and alliance picking, and scouting. Robotics was not what it was back in October. I had grasped the meaning of FIRST, after hearing the guests speak at opening ceremonies. Our next regional happened much the same way, and then a week ago we left for nationals

I had a great time at the championships. I saw a lot of robots, and a lot of really compassionate teams, along with the best Dean Speech I've heard yet. I felt the excitement in the crowds, and in the pits as well. But then the season ended, and we came home to a shop littered with spare parts and old robots, and I began to think back on my first year in FIRST, and how it had changed my look upon robotics and technology as a whole. I got thinking about the next year, when our team would only have 2 seniors, and our entire drive team, head designer, and head programmers would be gone. Our graphic designer and safety captain, the "awkward couple", would be gone as well, the girl in that couple being the one who first pushed me into the team.

I've met some really cool people through FIRST, whether they be a mentor, a teacher, a student on the team, a random person at an event. I don't really know why I joined FIRST, but I know I'm glad I did

Boy...I write a pretty good 5 paragraph essay in 3 minutes.

[MishraArtificer]

Originally Posted by MrFixIt2719

...and it was four months before kickoff for triple play 2005 and a mentor from team 240 came to ur school and was talking to some us kids in the engineering class

DO you remember offhand who that mentor was? If it WAS Triple Play (2005), it would have been Bill Geal, George Teriberi, or Dan Katanski.

[Katie_UPS]

I know I'm reviving my own dead thread, but I still like stories.

In my 8th grade year, I moved into my new school system. I went to a few Lego Robotics meetings, since my old school didn't have a team of any kind, but I didn't much like it.

Enter 9th grade. I went to the activities fair in the beginning of the year, and seeing the Aim High robot from 2006, I found it quite interesting. I went to a few meetings at the other school on my team, and they gave a few speeches about how important commitment was. That's probably the reason I became so involved in it (also, I didn't want to miss a meeting to hang out).

In 10th grade, I continued robotics, except now I was teaching new people. The same went for 11th grade this year, and next year I'm going to try even harder to up recruitment and involvement, so that the team stays alive and educated in the future.

[Mr. Pockets]

I had a friend whose brother and sister had both been part of robotics and he kept bugging me about how I had to be a part of it. I really didn't think about it a whole lot (I didn't think that i would have time for another activity especially one which he said had sessions everyday for six weeks ) I ended up picking up the flyer and coming to the school meeting (where interested people are supposed to come). I decided I would keep coming and it just kept getting more and more fun. By the time build season started going I couldn't have quit if I wanted to ^_^

[dbs12693x]

My brother saw a demo of the "Aim high" robot of my team and told me the school had a robotics club that made a robot which could play basketball.

Well, I didn't know much about robots (or at least NOW I know I didn't know much) but I thought it'd be the sort of thing I'm interested in.

I didn't think much of it at the first few meetings pre-season (I almost didn't come to kick-off) but it did interest me and I fit into a new crowd of people my freshman year of high school, which was a good motivator to stay there.

Now...gosh, I don't know what I'd do if I quit...maybe homework?

[alubin237]

Well for me it started in 8th grade when I joined the middle school FLL team. It was so much fun I knew I had to continue. Especially after I saw how cool the robots were. So I joined our high school’s team this year. From there it is just the same story as everyone else. This is my first FRC season that just past and I can’t wait till next season.

[Kmo]

OK so the way I got involved in FIRST was because of my mentor Mr. Lajvardi from Team 842 Falcon Robotics. My Freshmen year close to the end of the school year as I was looking through the scrapbook of the Falcon robotics Ledge suggested that I should join the team next year me and my friend Nilo. By my Sophomore year I became historian, the next year secretary, historian, electrical, and semi-builder. By my Senior year I became the driver and a builder.

I never knew about FIRST til my Sophomore year. I am proud to be part of FIRST.

[J93Wagner]

My 8th grade year was terrible. Bullies and what not kept on coming at me. For that reason, I decided I wanted to open enroll somewhere. A couple of days afterward, I saw an article in the local newspaper about an open house for an engineering charter school. So I told my parents about it and we ended up going to the open house. Afterward, I was SO enthusiastic that I decided I wanted to open enroll into the Appleton Area School District and Tesla Engineering Charter School. In fact, I mailed my application the next day. My parents hadn't seen me so happy in such a long time they decided to put up a lot of their time and effort taking me inbetween home and school which are about twenty minutes apart. When school finally started, I found out about Team 93 somewhere, I can't even remember where. And after the FIRST (pun intended) meeting, I was hooked, since that time I have been learning what was expected of a rookie, which isn't much except be on Inventor and learn that to help out the vets on the design team.

In effect, FIRST basically chose me. It has had a major impact on my life at school, at home, and at other places, all in a positive way.