Thoughts about the future FIRST games

[Tim Baird]

Originally Posted by David55

nothing new was discovered (ball shooters and collectors have been around for a while in sports). Most importantly, none of these robots solved any real world problems. Did we succeed in inspiring youth and attracting them to the world of science and technology, probably.

You hit the nail on the head with the second sentence in your quote. The point of FIRST is not to design new inventions or to solve the world's problems. That is what occurs after you've been in FIRST.

By participating in FIRST, high school students are learning more and more about the world of science and technology that is present and growing around them. Without FIRST, they might have never seen many of the wondrous things that are being created and developed everyday. By learning and being exposed to these things, they will then want to go on to college, learn more about the different fields, and then someday land a job where they can then begin designing new inventions. This is exactly what happened to me in high school, and I am eternally grateful for FIRST, what I learned through it, and the people that I worked with to get where I am today.

FIRST is just a single step in a multi-step process. Rome wasn't built in a day, and neither are solutions to the world's problems.