The Death of FIRST

[captainfirst]

Ya know, when I got out of high school, I had this elaborate plan to get a FIRST team at my college. Choosing a college so I could participate in FIRST was not something I was going to do and so I planned to get one. But after one attempt that didn't work, I stopped caring. If you go to a college such as the one I do and major in engineering, there are many more opportunities which are far more challenging that FIRST.

I never went back to help my team because our coach would come in on the first building day with drawings that looked nothing like what the students came up with. And also because I think his only reason for sticking with the program after his plans failed each year, was to take his family to Florida for free while the rest of the team paid their way.

As I recall, the point of FIRST is to inspire people to get involved in science and engineering. For this reason, I had no problem watching robots that were obviously built by professionals with no student involvement, because that was what I wanted to do. But I really couldn't stand the arrogant students on teams, where there would be 60 on the team, and not one of them in the pit.

Anyway, I'm majoring in engineering and part of that is because of FIRST. But people, get over it, FIRST should not consume your life. Decorating your entire room with stuff from FIRST? Grow up. It's like walking around with the trophy from boys-and-girls club soccer from when you were 8.

And so many people forget that the reason a lot of people join FIRST is for the trip to Florida. Yeah, yeah, you wanted the experience, but other don't. Take a look around during the finals and notice how many teams are not there cause they're having fun in the parks. Factor in all the people on teams where they don't do anything.... (side note: last time I was at finals, there was a team whose members were complaining they didnt get enough drive time because the people who were building the robot took longer than expected, and another team who said something about flying in a welder from Germany, and then followed that statement up with, but the students do about 90% of the work.)

In conclusion, FIRST is to inspire people, once you have your inspiration, you do not need to dedicate your life to it. If you get to college and all you can think about doing is going back to FIRST, that is a sad sight because you picked the wrong school.