My Nonprofit Reviews

I participated in FIRST programs throughout school, and am now a mentor for an FRC team. I had and continue to have a lot of fun, and I learned a lot of really valuable things. The main overarching concept I learned was what working as an engineer (of any kind) means. School (even college to a large extent) really doesn't involve much engineering. To me, this means solving open-ended problems with complex constraints as a team. I enjoy doing this, and FIRST helped me see how a job in engineering is a good fit for me. As a volunteer mentor, I enjoy working with high school students to help them discover what this means too. I think actual experience is by far the best way to decide whether you want to study engineering in college and beyond, and have some idea which area you want to learn more about.

Unlike school, FIRST's programs help participants learn "why" (why are we doing this? why aren't we doing that? why are we doing this now? why are we doing it this way? why is that important?). If you want to really understand something, that's the most important thing to know, and FIRST is good at designing programs which encourage students to figure that out, both on their own and with help from experienced adults.