FIRST

FIRST Robotics persuaded me to study engineering. An international engineering competition tasking high school students to design, build and compete with a complex robot in just six weeks, FIRST taxed my technical and leadership skills to the limit. As team captain for the last three of my four years of high school, I was able to greatly expand my knowledge of engineering design and grow our team through partnerships with companies in our community.

 In FIRST, I found myself wearing many hats, and was deeply involved in actuator design, electrical layouts and simple embedded systems design and programming. For all the technical skills learned, FIRST taught me just as much about leadership under difficult resource and time constraints. Creating a cohesive and effective team presented an unexpected challenge, but in the final two years, we were able to build an excellent team and two superb machines.

The awards were won to prove it, including winning a regional competition, an engineering design award, and competing in the national competition in 2006 . In terms of sheer practical experience, FIRST has certainly taught me the most about engineering design and management under challenging conditions, and I am still building on those lessons today.