For some of us, Robotics is a place to have fun, or do something that you enjoy.
I am in robotics because I enjoy it, and it is a place to do something productive with your friends, as well as make new friends.
I join robotics because I really enjoy it,I want to be an engineer in the future, and it’s just a really Great experience. there’s nothing that beats being in robots, and i love it because you’re never bored and you’re always learning to do new things. 
To the creator of this thread,
The following threads may be useful to you.
Why are YOU involved in FIRST? and Girls, Why did you join FIRST???
Hope you find what you’re looking for.
Because FIRST is a black hole of course. Once you’re in, you just can’t leave.
More seriously, I’m mentor robotics because I am studying to be a teacher and I think that FIRST teaches many skills and values that are extremely important to carry over into the classroom. I know, the FIRST documentation says the FIRST takes knowledge taught in the classroom and carries it over into a real-world experience, but I think it’s a little confused. I think that FIRST teaches students how to learn, and exposes them to a new level of thinking which can be used in the classroom to better education in general. One example - How many classrooms do you know of that are capable of catering to the number of different learning styles that a FIRST robotics team is able to accommodate.
~Allison
PS - I voted for “It is my future” because I think that FIRST robotics (or at least the values of FIRST robotics) should be everyone’s future. Of course, FRC isn’t for everyone, but that’s what FVC and FLL are for. 
Kind of funny story really,
I originally joined robotics thinking I was going to become go to school for mechanical engineering and this was a good idea to find out about it. After a two weeks into the season I decided that it was really boring to me, and that I did NOT want to be a mechanical engineer. (I don’t mean to offend anyone mechanical engineering is not for me).
I’m no quitter so I decided to take the Public Relations route and make promotional videos for the team. I found out I love the camera. In my second year of robotics I picked up animation and Love it even more than the video camera. Animation is what I want to do, if it wasn’t for robotics, I probably would be going to school for mechanical engineering and just now realizing that I don’t want to be a mechanical engineer and not knowing which direction to take.
Thank you FIRST
Where else can a high school student get to use 3Ds, Inventor, and play with expensive robots?
I’ll be the first non-student mentor to chime in here. As a professional engineer, I don’t get the chance to flex my engineering brain all that much. Rarely do we (engineers) design from a blank sheet of paper, build the hardware ourselves, or test the design iterations we come up, all in a 6 week period. To be able to teach a talented group of students, and then to work with them through the robot design/development/build is a very rewarding experience. FIRST allows me to teach, interact, play, and compete with a wide range of students, mentors, and engineers. If that doesn’t bring a huge smile to your face, I’m not sure what will…
BEN
I completely agree with what Ben said. Additionally I think that working with FIRST makes me a better engineer. It forces me to look not only at what I think is a good design, but how to make it, what parts are most likely to fail, how do I assemble it, and how do I service it. These items can frequently get lost along the way of making a “perfect” or idealized design. FIRST keeps me grounded in reality.
Pete
Geek here. It was kind of a spur of the moment thing. I was watching our school’s close circuit morning TV show and decided: “Hay I should go do robotics!”, and I did.
Why am I in robotics? Because it was part of my job, starting way back in the 1980’s and still is once in a while (and I play hookie from administative duties).
Why am I in FIRST robotics? Because:
- We happened to move into Palisades School District (home of team 103);
- My daughter signed up for “robotics” as a freshman after-school activity;
- Once I saw what it was, I couldn’t let her have all the fun!
Joined as a mentor/parent and enjoyed that for 4 years, even though I am mechanically disfunctional. Then I switched to the the “dark side” of FIRST as I like to call it. Instead of experiencing the magic of FIRST, I am now part of the group that makes the magic happen. Why am I in robotics? I like to give back, and at this point in my life, it happens to be to a great robotics organization.
The reason I joined was because I enjoyed doing things with my hands and I had nothing really to do after school but, once I got involved and made a ton of friends it was like a black hole and I still can’t think of not being involved
can i select ‘quite a few of the above’ ?
Well, since they are checkboxes and not radio buttons, yes you can.
My own personal story is that I joined my high school’s team as a junior because I heard they needed a programmer. The previous year the team had been almost entirely seniors, and very few students returned. I had done some coding for fun on my own, and I thought that programming robots would be pretty cool. Little did I know how much FIRST would suck me in and show me all this engineering stuff that I had never gotten a chance to see before.
I joined FIRST for many reasons!
I joined becasue a friend told me about our high schools robotics team. He told me about FIRST and what it was all about and I got interested in it. I am still involved with FIRST becasue it is fun but it gave me the chance to use my hands and learn about many of the engineering fields out there. FIRST also made me pick a career that I might want to go into in college (electrical engineering). FIRST had done a ton for me but I joined becasue its my career to be an engineer and it’s FUN!