Hey i am on team 47 and i have a general question. i would just like opinions but we have to do our team newspaper and Hall of Fame video and our video team is full of rookies and i was just gonna get them some general ideas from fellow FIRSTers so we know what the FIRST community feels like so What is FIRST really about??? I could tell them my opinions and what i think and we could just ask our coaches but they are busy and it is better to get the fellow FIRSTers opinions. i would highly appreciate it and it would be a lot of help for these FIRST timers. 
To me, FIRST is about having students realize that there IS an answer to the age old high school question: “when are we ever going to use this crap?”
I think that if most high schoolers knew the answer to that question they would feel much more motivated in school, learn more, and would be less likely to drop out and more likely to go to college.
i wish i knew, and i could help! =)
*just a comment
But Oh yeah, FIRST to me?? it’s a program to help out young kids like us to know more about technology! well not kids were teens really! thats what we are! 
haha
FIRST is about inspiring everyone to believe in, and inspire, themselves and eachother as people who are capable of making the world we live in a better place through science and technology.
First (heh!) and foremost, FIRST is about inspiring people and recognizing work in the fields of science and technology. It’s built into its name.
Besides that, it’s all about partnerships. Students & mentors. Schools & businesses. Teams & communities. Temporary alliances during competition. Longterm friendships for life.
FIRST is using a fun competitive means to institute creative thinking and teach behavior patterns that will hopefully be used in the students (and mentors) lives.
There are two answers:
from a mentor / teacher / sponser persective: FIRST is about showing HS students what engineering careers are like
from a student perspective: FIRST is one of the greatest experiences you can have in HS (most rewarding, most challenging, most fun, best people to be with, & awesome competition events in far away places…)
FIRST is a program inspiring young people, and recognizing their older mentors, in science and technology. It utilizes a robot to create a means of connection, but in the end, the robot should be a by-product of inspired students, and recognized adults.
Among other things, FIRST is about starting with a huge problem and a bunch of parts and working together with a team and the community to produce a large-scale, working solution.
This is what FIRST is about for me:
Dean’s insight above, that today’s established truth will eventually be shown to be false, is one of the important reasons for experienced people to do extra-curricular things like mentoring a FIRST team. Helping high-schoolers, who are discovering laws of physics and principles of engineering for the first time, helps keep the understanding of those laws and principles from becoming too rigid in our own minds.
I posted this in an earlier thread but it seems more appropriate here.
First is a team effort where students can work side by side with business professionals and teachers and students from other schools and nations. All involved learn new and innovative ways of problem solving, thinking outside the box, in a team spirit where everyone is on the same team. This encourages all involved to freely interact with others to learn, discuss startegy and achieve common goals without the baggage usually involved with team sports. All of this is driven by a common, all encompassing guideline for conduct known as “gracious professionalism”, that is required of all participants. First, by it’s very nature, is a culture changing environment for the betterment of society and the individuals involved.
Getting excited about something important.
FIRST is about getting kids excited for careers they may not considered, in fields they didn’t know they were good at.
FIRST is about being able to think on your feet. To take an idea & run with it, but also be open to changes & alterations. It’s about being able to go out on the field to battle a team one match…& wind up being allianced with them in the next. It’s about sharing your excitement, disappointment & everything in between with a bunch of people you’ve never met before…but still a bunch of people who know exactly where you’re coming from. That is FIRST…to me, at least.
It’s about changing the culture.
Technology has changed culture in inmeasurable ways. The human race’s incessant pushing of the technological envelope has, for many of us (read: the first world), trivialized what used to be the central struggle of life: obtaining sustenance, shelter, and other such boring things. Life is so easy now, we spend most of our time entertaining ourselves (see: “information economy”): Keeping up with the Joneses, fawning over the simulacra of celebrity, buying things, popping anti-depressants, and going berzerk about whether your professional sports team is going to beat their professional sports team. All of these wonderful diversions are the product of engineers, scientists, mathematicians and other such persons educated in useful things. FIRST is about altering society to pay more respect to the person who designs and keeps images flowing to the (Bigger! Flatter! Crisper!) glowing box, as oppose the the flavor of the minute refelected in phosphor (or hey, Plasma!). Inspiring young people is in and of itself desirable, and conducive to this cultural change.
Nerd Powa!
I think that FIRST stands for the promotion of learning science and technology in High School and an oppourtunity to learn about the technological and manufacturing parts of business.
FIRST is my antidrug.
Wetzel
FIRST is an opportunity for the community to celebrate and recognize science and technology. Just refering back to Dean’s speech at Kickoff, it’s time to celebrate the scientists and engineers instead of movie stars and professional atheletes. To shift the attention to what really matters in the society, the people who make it possible for us to idolize celebrities that we do.
Personally, FIRST was a guiding light(excuse the cliche) for me through high school. I entered HS with no idea of what I wanted to do. I joined FRC just to see try it out, and after the season ended, I was hooked. There was no doubt in my mind as to what was going to do in life. FIRST was the start of my nerdom 
FIRST is also a place were nerds can be nerds, where we are not ashamed to show off our brains. Think of it as a nerd sanctuary, if you will.
On a side note, those who want to read Dean’s 2006 kickoff speech can find it here: http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/showthread.php?t=41564 .
To me, it’s pretty simple. FIRST is an organization committed to inspiring youths in the areas of science and technology. It’s about mentors, and subsequently, students, modeling gracious professionalism in everything they do.