[Joe G.]

I have a long list of reasons that I do this, that I will post sometime when I'm more awake. But this one was the biggest reminder that I've gotten in a long, long time why I do this.

I was reffing an FLL competition. A team of several young girls, no older than 10 or 11, comes up to my table. They were very enthusiastic about the whole thing, particularly the two at the table running the robot, despite not having the greatest robot in the world. It only went for about 145 points, out of 400. But on this run, most everything fell right for them. And the girls were psyched.

The way things normally work, the ref just checks off a series of boxes, without calculating any scores. But these girls were so excited about their run, that they wanted their score now. Normally, ref's aren't supposed to do this, but I decided to be nice, take the 15 seconds or so to tally their points, and told them that they'd gotten a 130.

It wasn't much. But they went berserk, hugging each other, high-fiving me, and just generally being the most excited people I've ever seen. They might have just saved someone's life. Well, if you take the task descriptions of FLL literally, they did.

That was the highlight of the day, until I left. As I left, I walked past one of the girls who had been at the table, talking to her dad. And as I passed, I overheard "I used to want to be a ballerina, but now I want to be a ballerina, and a Biomedical Engineer." Dad smiled.

Mission, accomplished.

I do this because I love to watch people get excited about the stuff that's going to save the world someday, and doing what I can to get them there.