A Journey In FIRST, And 5 Lessons I've Learned Along The Way

Author: Afomia Mesfin

There is often this idea in tech that you need to have known what you want to do or which field you are going to go into from such an early age, middle school, or even elementary school. I can tell you firsthand, from someone who wasn’t sure about her involvement in STEM until sophomore year of high school, that this is entirely false. So here’s lesson 1:

Lesson 1: The only thing you need to succeed in the STEM field is curiosity and a drive to learn, fail, and learn again.

But let’s take a few steps back, and I can tell you about my own journey and the lessons I wish I knew along the way.

Lesson 2: Mistakes are the only way to learn- because it means you put yourself out there.

Oftentimes, we psych ourselves out of the experiences we would most benefit from out of fear of being inadequate to deserve them. This is something I felt in my first year on my robotics team, as I began learning programming and dove deep into all the technical terms, design strategies, and subgroups within FIRST Robotics. For a while, it felt that all I could do was make mistakes and ask questions - but that’s exactly what you should be doing. Pushing myself out of my comfort zone, even if it felt at times as though I was doing things that I wasn’t good at, from speaking in front of our team, to going to other schools and working with them on autos, is what gave me the practice necessary to start understanding what made me the most passionate. In my second year on the team, I was given the role of Autonomous Lead - a role that had never existed before in our team’s history. But my goal hadn’t been to pave a new path - even when I felt behind some of my peers who had been on the team for longer, I kept practicing, failing, sometimes embarrassing myself, sometimes succeeding, and always learning. Mistakes are not a step backward - they are a different type of step forward. Each challenge you overcome, whether by yourself or with the help of others, is another one you can put under your belt and reference in the future. Every time I put myself in a different situation, from helping with the electronics board to learning how to program vision, I walked away knowing more than when I started. Take things one step at a time.

Lesson 3: The key to leadership is guidance and support.

My role as autonomous lead placed me in front of a lot of people - from my peers to mentors who believed I had something to share and the ability to guide others. While being in such a position can be overwhelming, it’s important to understand the true meaning of your role. As a leader, it’s important to focus on how you can serve your peers and cultivate a support system. To be a leader, you don’t need any fancy titles. I felt the most like a leader prior to even getting my role as Autonomous Lead or Team Captain - I felt it most when my peers told me that they felt comfortable coming to me with concerns or ideas regarding the team because they knew Iwould be able to help them address both, and represent their ideas to the mentors and the rest of the team. It’s important to support a creative network and encourage the ideas of others. Think of a time in your life when you have seen someone else as a leader. Was it their ability to listen and execute? Was it their skill in speaking up when others couldn’t? Was it their determination to make others feel welcome? In each of these scenarios, guidance and support are at the cornerstone of what a leader represents.

Lesson 4: Take chances. You are even more powerful than you know.

Looking back on my experience on my team, my moments of the greatest growth were when I felt the most out of place. When I made spur-of-the-moment decisions that landed me in roles and situations that I needed to grow to fill. When I interviewed for a leadership position after being encouraged by our current team captain, I had still felt like I had too much to learn to guide others - but the process and my coach's decision proved to me that I had potential beyond what I was allowing myself to believe in. Were there moments where it felt as though the people I was meant to guide knew more than I? Absolutely. But that just meant I had so much more room to grow. I learned more in that year from my peers, mentors, and other teams that I had access to due to that first step forward than in nearly any other period of my life. When I volunteered to attend and contribute to design meetings, I hadn’t ever done anything like that before. But that group of people taught me more about the innovation and reiteration process that is so core to STEM than I could have learned on my own, afraid of stepping out of my comfort zone. So take a chance on yourself. Even if you don’t feel entirely prepared to do something, treat that as you ensuring you have room to grow. That space between where you are now and where you think you need to be is room for the learning process that will take you beyond the barriers you have placed upon yourself. Take that first step forward, and then the next.

Lesson 5: Gracious Professionalism isn’t just an intention - it’s an action.

Gracious Professionalism - the motto of FIRST Robotics, and one of the most repeated phrases and ideologies you will hear at any competition. But the heart of Gracious Professionalism is in the actions and steps we take each day to embody the idea. It’s not just about respecting other teams. It’s about being the first to go over and help when someone is struggling. It’s about giving the team you’re up against in the next match a tool to fix their intake. It’s about cheering for other teams. It’s about adjusting your strategy to support your alliance partners. Or, according to our drive coach, it’s getting on the field to dance the Cha Cha Slide in front of a packed stadium and stall for your opponents. The greatest lesson I’ve learned from my time in FIRST so far is that kindness, not just Gracious Professionalism, goes a long way- in forming relationships, solving problems, creating change, and promoting creativity and innovation. While my personal experience may differ greatly from yours, each of these lessons is one that my peers and I have learned from experience, trial, and error. It’s all a learning process, but I truly believe that’s what STEM is about - falling in love with the process. Everyone’s path looks different, but as long as you are guided by curiosity and the desire to do good, you are on the right one, and your passion will take you far.