The Death of FIRST

[Patrick Wang]

Something that I have picked up in my few years with FIRST and my few months in student leadership can not be better worded in my opinion than a Team Advisor by the name of Damon Jensen from Newark Memorial High put it.

Forgive me Damon if I am putting you in the spotlight

To paraphrase,

"To build a robot is only half of FIRST, the other half, is to build an organization."

One must realize that this is a great challenge to many high school students.

This is not an isolated incident by any means. Learning to deal with people, learning to preserve an organization will inevitabally come to this sort of crisis or crossroads especially when those student leaders are precisely what they are, inexpierenced student leaders.

Whatever your thoughts might be concerning being ostresized by your former team, I do not know, but I only ask that you have faith in FIRST to present a real-world situation to student who in this case, have a chance to make a mistake within an organization that will not destroy their life.

Do not be discouraged by particuliar individuals who have differences with you, have faith, fight on.

At the same time, you must let the current student leaders operate, make mistakes, and learn.

This is one of the unwritten ultimate goals of FIRST, to give students a simulation of the real world, at least in my opinion.