>> The FIRST Robotics Competition
is a competition which is run primarily in America.
We've been doing it here in Perth for about five or six years now.
>> Whole host of high school students are mentored by university students
and/or industry people, and then create a robot in six weeks
that they then take to a competition.
>> That includes design, build, fabricate, debug.
>> I was in Year 11 in high school and I just saw an email sent out
to my high school saying "Hey do you want to build a robot?"
>> I came in as a student and graduated my way up to,
to now being one of the lead mentors, I lead one of our two teams here.
I came into it kind of shy being like I don't know what's going on.
And then once I started interacting with the people here
I realised these people are just like me.
>> It's also building relationships between high school
and uni students which is really cool as well.
>> Doing the FIRST Robotics Competition
allowed me to work on my practical skills.
That was one thing I found a bit lacking
so it allowed me to work - build a robot.
I've designed, I could, when I was doing
designing I'd find a lot of problems that you would not think of.
Can you get a tool in there?
If there are allocated space for any fasteners?
>> They have to manage these people, they have to guide them.
They're not just telling them what to do,
they have to help them grow along the way.
>> I think as I start to go into my career
the skills that I've learned here are gonna be really, really invaluable.
>> There's a lot of teamwork involved in building a robot
when you're working with twenty something other people.
There's sometimes personality clashes
so you have to learn how to deal with conflict management.
>> It's those human and collaborative and creative skills that are really
difficult to replicate in a course you have to do a real life example of it.
There are a number of industry sponsors and what they see,
what they identify is that the students, the Curtin students,
they see mentoring the high school students,
they see those leadership qualities, they see those management skills
and they can really think "Right, I know once you've finished
your degree please come and talk to me because we want you on our team.
>> I'd really like to see a lot more girls involved.
They're not gonna be as nervous about joining
because they're not gonna be the only one
and be outnumbered significantly.
>> I could split my life in half between before and after I started
this, this program, started teaching the students who I once was.
Being part of a FIRST Robotics competition has been
probably the single biggest benefit of my entire life.
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