I’m currently a freshman on a community FTC team. As the FTC season continues, I wonder if it’s worth the time commitment. I enjoy FTC but it takes up at least 15 hours a week, so now I can’t do other things I’m otherwise interested in like theater, color guard, track, and other things. Is continuing robotics into sophomore year worth it, or should I just drop it?
Worth it in what sense?
In terms of ECs, you should do what is right for you. What is right for you, what was right for me, and what is right for someone else are three entirely different things.
You might want to read the “applying sideways” blog on the MIT admissions web site. As I understand it, it recommends that you do what is right for you, and whatever you do, do it well. This is the approach that my family has taken and it has gotten the four of us admitted to eight different very good universities (one each for a bachelor’s degree, a different one each for graduate work), and only one of them was MIT. However, the four of us did four very different sets of things to get wherever we are today.
For me personally, robotics would have been way more interesting than any of the other things that you mentioned, and would have been a good EC for what I ended up doing in university. However, just because it would be a good choice for me, does not say anything about whether it will be a good choice for you.
I would have also. It looks like good educational fun to me.
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Good advice from dadtwogirls. I agree you should do activities that you like, don’t do activities thinking it will look good for college (not that you said that, but sometimes that consideration is in peoples’ minds.)
You are also at the age where you will have to start making hard choices about how you spend your limited free time. Knowing that you can’t do everything you are interested in is part of the battle and part of growing up.
Prioritize your activities the best you can, according to whatever set of factors are most important to you. You can do that by creating a pros/cons list or whatever tool works for you. Also know that nothing you choose today/this year is permanent. If you ultimately decide FTC isn’t right for you, it’s ok to drop it and do something else.
FIRST is a great program. What you will get out of it may depend on what you put into it as well as what the rest of your team is like. At your next meeting, when you have a moment to chat, ask the upperclassmen what they think, both the team captain and sub-team leaders as well as students who are on the fringe of participation and likely put far less time in. Get a range of thoughts. Find out what they’ve learned, would they do it again, etc.
Whether it’s worth the opportunity cost of time you might spend elsewhere depends on you and your interests.
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Everybody is different, but I can tell you about some of our experience. Our 12th grader decided to stop participating in the robotics team after 3 years. The main reason was that his interests shifted and he became busy with a number of other activities. He didn’t even list the past robotics involvement in his college application, because it was no longer relevant. Our 10th grader recently decided to stop doing robotics, mainly because of the lackluster support from the high school for this team. He may still be interested in STEM, but he is looking at focusing on other EC’s. If the team was properly supported and staffed by the HS, he may have stayed on. If your team has good support and you think that you are learning, developing, and enjoying yourself, try to continue. You may think differently 2 years from now. Or you may want to major in theater, who knows 
This question has no sure answer. Every moment one experiences contributes to something later in one’s life.
To assess if anything is worth “it”, you need to first define “it”.
I have been involved with FTC for 10 years as volunteer, coach, referee, judge, etc. I have witnessed many students’ growth on a wide spectrum on various perspectives, some technically and some mentally, some quickly and some slowly, some eagerly while some reluctantly, but everyone grew, me included.
On the other hand, since you’re just starting high school, it is a good idea to explore as many opportunities as you can. Maybe you can talk to your coach so that you focus on doing one thing for the team that would not take up so much time. When I was coaching, I had team members in charge of things like making 3D models, designing the notebook layout, designing team t-shirt, building spare slides, taking pictures, editing videos, etc. Taking these tasks allowed the members to stay connected to the team while being flexible on their schedules. Some later decided to be more involved while some drifted away.
Sure, it needs huge time, there is so much to learn (Engineering - Software/Hardware), if you don’t enjoy/learn better to drop now, any thing that you don’t enjoy becomes painful, you many not even think about how much time you are spending. If you decide to continue, by junior year try be in leadership role.
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