What is FIRST Robotics Competition

FIRST Robotics Competition is an awesome high school robotics competition that I was involved with back in high school, and still am to this day. As a student on a team, you'd have six weeks to design, build, and program a robot to complete tasks for a game. Your team would then compete with others at local district events, as well as potential championship events, gaining awesome experiences in teamwork and STEM along the way.

Video published on YouTube, created by FIRST and Automation Direct.

How am I involved?

Since I'm no longer in high school, I can no longer participate as a student. However, now I'm involved as a volunteer to help teach and inspire more students, and to help be part of the volunteer crew that helps run the events. One of the things I've been a part of as a volunteer is the A/V crew, the crew that helps run cameras and audio, as well as record the events for future use. This helps me as I get to learn about the equipment and skills used in industry, get to network and meet with awesome people, and help run events for tons of students.

An example of a match video our crew would produce on YouTube. Created by my volunteer crew.

As a part of this, I volunteer at a variety of events. From the start start of the season, around November, I've been volunteering at these events on weekends, amassing a sum of around 187 volunteer hours during the 2018-19 season. Fun fact: my final event actually just wrapped up Saturday, April 6, the same day this creative project is due! (maybe that's why I'm so tired...)

More information is available at firstinspires.org and firstwa.org.