example of ungracious professionalism at NYC
 

I'm reminded of an ungracious professionalism incident that happened this pass eekend at the NYC Regional.
A parent/mentor of a powerhouse and wonderful "team" decided to give the Head Inspector, who came directly from FIRST, a hard time about the inspector's weigh-in scale. In the pass this TEAM always gets multiple awards.
The parent instead that our scale is off by 5 lbs because their robot is overweight by 5 lbs and that can't be. To prove it to us that the scale is inaccurate, he and his friend got on the scale and show us that they "can't be that heav." He also claimed that he must be right because "he's an engineer (and we're not)." He didn't give up and asked to speak with the Regional Directors. He instead on us showing him prove that the sclae has been calibrated. What do we do to make this man happy?

Several of the inspectors run to another building where there is a weight room and picked up 70 lbs of dumbbells. We brough the weights back to the scale and show that at 70 lbs the reading was off 1 lbs which can be the weight themselves.
Well, this parent and team mentor was still not satisfied but the Head Inspector over ruled and falsed the teams robot.
Boy, was this man unhappy, so he started a complainting to everyone about what "dummies" the inspectors were. Word travel fast among the volunteers and every incident about the teams get funnel back to the FIRST judges (especially when the Thursday Inspectors are also the Friday Judges).
In conclusion, this team received very little votes for any FIRST awards that requires judging. This one miss guided parent/mentor who is clueless about FIRST and gracious professionalism really brought down a great team this year.
There is a lesson here for everyone.

:(

Team 810
 

This is for team 810. I cant believe you guys are going to let a hard worked season end like this. All this bashing is quite disturbing. I found out about the latest posts at work today. And decided to set the record true. First off, I dont care about winning. I just wanted to see the team be happy about a functional robot that they have made work and do its job at the competition. Yes, Maryland was a tough time for everyone because there were a lot of tweaks to do. And yes I did get upset about certain situations when knowone would help me get something done that needed to be done right away. And to those people I am sorry. Stress does weird things to peoples emotions. Understand it, deal with it cause thats what happens in the work world and real world. But it takes a bigger man to get over that obstacle and proceed towards the goal. And I was very happy to see students doing that because of the stressful circumstances.

Mike Krass- You put a ton of effort into the design of the robot. Some errors, but overall it looked sharp. People forget that our daily lives inhibit us from doing certain things. And by that I mean you were the one running around to the machine shops getting parts and materials, doing drawings. I on the other hand can't do as much as you did because I work 50 hours a week. The students should be grateful for what you have done. The only rebuttles I have is that you should have brought the students more into this projects. We brought some kids into the design phase when we could have brought more. And you never taught the kids how you achieved your gear ratios calculations, which in my mind is a vidal piece of information. Also i think you messed up your van door motor gear calculations. When you break teeth on a gear thats not a good thing. And thats what I was addressing in the bus when your friend Michelle was there. I just stated something was wrong and had to be looked at.

Our Teacher Advisor is a biology teacher. Shes not biotech. So yes she depended on her engineering staff for help. If it wasnt for her, you wouldnt have a team. Because no other teachers stepped up to the plate to take on this task and she did. She did help in raising funds for the team to be able to participate in these events and pay for the robot. A task I would not like to have. So knowbody forget her role in this project.

In conclusion, I thought we did an awesome job on the robot, especially since it was a difficult design to manufacture. I give props to all the people involved. I am a manufacturing engineer, not a mechanical, I only learned about the theories of pneumatics and gears, but never practiced it. I was to busy learning about tools, assemblies, fixture design and manufacturing processes. And do you know why I wanted to join FIRST and help the team. So i can learn all those things and more and have the students teaching it to me. And I believe thats what FIRST is all about. To be able to teach something to someone is one of the greatest learning tools of them all. Because it displays that you fundamentally know what your talking about.

So enough of this bashing crap, and let's celebrate our achievement of the award.

See you next year Team 810

Peter Liao
Manufacturing Engineer
Anorad Corporation

They are lucky to have someone like you.
 

Boy, are they lucky to have some like you.

Most mentors would not come back.

(everyone take a deep breath)

:)

You have to remeber, we are only human. Arguing is something that we have the tendancy to use. In some cases, when monitored and controlled, it can be productive. My team argues in the designing phase, obviously, but we get things done by a vote, the teams should be an absoluto democracy! But yelling at someone is not the way to go, you should help them as much as you can. Untill then, be on the lookout to help when you can and to stay calm, getting mad gets the better of you.

You know, I can vouch for this. My team, in the past, has been very bad at gracious professionalism.

We usually have a pretty good robot, but a bad team. We know this. At one regional last year everyone was fighting and crying and everything. It was pretty bad. Even the levels of student involvement were down.

This year, though, our team has recovered 100%. We have a pretty cool robot and an even better team. We are all happy and get along great!

You could say that we are a perfect recovery story. It's great! Of course, we have a long way to go to make amends to all of the people that knew us before we got better.

Sorry for everything! ^-^' (Might as well do it as I got your attention!)

-Amanda

Even though I'm only a sophomore I have seen so much fighting amonst other teams... Too much fighting and a lot less enjoying the comp. is what has been happening... I hope this can change soon...

That's absolutely great Amanda! I think we had a few issues every once in a while with gracious professionalism (we always joked around that the award we would never win was the Sportsmanship Award). With two very competitive teams, we had some scuffs last year, but that's all resolved now which I am so happy about. I think our team morale also went up this year so I'm glad to see other teams change for the positive too! Can't wait to compete with/against you guys in LA.

Well, I'll be lookin' for you! haha!

And it's funny that you say that! Our team has REALLY gone through a transformation, cause we actually won the Sportsmanship Award at Phoenix! A first EVER for our team! Congratulations to you guys too! Hopefully we'll see you there!

-Amanda