Holland C.H.A.O.S. (Team #74 FIRST Robotics)

 How FIRST Robotics has impacted my life......
by Rick Slater

As a sophomore in High School, attending Holland High School, I was further investigating my interests in becoming an Architect. For years I had been creating house floor plans and had taken drafting classes in Middle School and as a freshman in High School, and to further this interest, I had signed up for a computer Aided Drafting (CAD) class at school. As the school year progressed, Mr. Doug Sullivan, my CAD teacher had approached myself and other students in his CAD class about participating in a new program the High School was getting involved in. The program, he explained to us, was called U.S. FIRST Robotics, and gave students like ourselves an opportunity to design and build a robot to compete against other robots. While I was good in Science and Math, I had only ever thought of becoming an Architect. However, it was not long, and I found myself sitting in a room at Holland High School with other students and Engineers from Haworth Corporation, brainstorming ideas for our robot, that would eventually be named Virtual Evolutionary robotic Nomad or V.E.R.N for short.

Once our robot was designed, debugged and built, we shipped it off to Disney's Epcot center for the competition. As the elimination rounds began, I was amazed at the ideas and concepts other teams had spawned and from that point - I was hooked on FIRST Robotics. The next year, I had come back to the team as a junior, and was beginning to ponder where I would continue my education, most likely in the field of Architecture. One Saturday Afternoon, I was chatting with one of our Haworth mentors about college and careers, and soon after found myself extremely intrigued about Michigan Technological University and a career in Engineering.

Before I knew it, I was a proud member of the Holland High School, Class of '97, an Alumni of U.S. FIRST Robotics, and a soon to be freshman in the college of Mechanical Engineering at Michigan Technological University and a career in Engineering. The three years I had spent on the Robotics team taught me how to be more of a creative thinker, how to work with a team, how to tap a hole, but most importantly had sparked an interest in Engineering, Science, and Math, that had not been there before.

upon graduation from Michigan Tech, with my Bachelors of Science in Mechanical Engineering degree in hand, I had began my professional career as a Program Engineer with Magna Donnelly Engineered Glass Systems, a Tier One Automotive Supplier. Walking through the office one afternoon, I spotted one of our equipment Engineers with a red polo shirt on, bearing the all too familiar intertwined circle, triangle and square. Upon talking to him, I learned that Magna Donnelly had begun Co-Sponsoring Holland High Schools FIRST Robotics Team with our Founding sponsor Haworth Corporation. It was not long, and I fully immersed in my fourth FIRST Robotics Season, but this time as a Mentor.

In my first few hours back on the Team, I realized how much had changed since my Senior Year-the robots were bigger, the game was more complex, the technology being utilized on the machines, the sensors, the control systems, the materials! Yet some things had not changed at all - the underlying principals of FIRST to inspire these students in the areas of Science, Math, and Technology, and Dean Kamen still only wears Denim!

The 2008 season marks my fifth year as a Mentor for team 74, and would argue that the impact on my life from FIRST as a Mentor is a great as the impact on my life as a FIRST student. Not only does being a Mentor let me give back to the Program what I gleaned from it, it also keeps my knowledge of engineering fresh, allowing me to do my job better, and constantly forces me to think out-of-the-box.