In high school, FIRST Robotics was my life. I stayed after school every day to meet with my team and complete the necessary tasks for competition. I knew only one person there my first meeting and that was the friend I went with. But it did not take long before I made new friends and became an integral part of the team. The next year, the team was filled with people I knew from my classes. These team members became my second family and my friends for life. We spent hours together after school and days together outside of school.

     In the first few weeks of every year, we all anticipated the game for that year. We would search forums daily for the clues to the year's game, and when kick off came we would have a huge kickoff party to celebrate the start of our build season.

     By our senior year, my team had become a close knit family. We knew our ins and outs, our skills and how to use them for the good of the team. We had people skilled in computer design and 3D modeling, we had people skilled in computer programing, in art, mechanics, and circuits. We were like our own engineering firm with all engineering fields integrated into the perfect team. However, that year we had lost all funding for our team from school budget cuts and our outside funding from Brookhaven National Labs. Our team was heartbroken, we thought we were going to lose the team. But we spoke with our principal, who was always so involved with our team (he went to every Long Island regional since our school started a team 11 years ago) and he was able to find some funding for our team to apply for the year and get our kit of parts. But we still struggled with the lack of building space. Lucky for us though, all FIRST robotics teams are gracious and professional and we found a local team that got us permission to come to their school's technology labs to help us build our robot. We used spare parts we gutted from previous years' robots and the cheapest, yet most effective, materials we could buy to build our robot. We had to use all our skills for all aspects of the robot building, no help from outside whatsoever. We were all afraid of what would happen during competition, but we also knew we had the skills to design a great robot with what we can and with no help. That year turned into the best year for our Robotics team. With our scrap metal robot, built in another school's lab, and programmed/welded/etc by hand we managed to take first place at the SBPLI Long Island Regional. The first time our team has won first place since the SBPLI regional started!

     But Robotics was not just fun and games, and making lifelong friends. It truly gave us all an experience we could never forget. For me, my robotics team taught me management skills when I organized and helped run a volunteer event within our team. It taught me design and building techniques, problem solving abilities for real world problems, it helped me learn skills on computer programs such as 3D Studio Max and more. Robotics drove my love for engineering even further by giving me the chance to actually do what I love: design, build, and bring to life a robot that can complete a given task or action.

     FIRST Robotics is a wonderful program for high school students who are interested in engineering, computer science, math or related fields. This is the reason why even out of college, I still continue to go to the Long Island regional every year to volunteer.