Quote:
Originally Posted by MrBydlon
Finally, Chairman's Award connected us with teams and people that we never would have connected with otherwise. FRC Team 2220 from Eagan, MN also submitted Chairman's this year and we worked closely with them throughout the process. Our team now considers them genuine friends. It also connected us with Renee Becker, the wonderful MN FIRST Senior Mentor. Through her we met tons of other teams. It's like a tree. From that Chairman's root, our connections and outreach and goals and team pride and focus have all grown.
So to answer the question "Why even bother submitting a Chairman's Award if we're not gonna win?", my response would be another question "Why even bother building a robot if we're not gonna win?". The answer to both? To learn and grow.
|
It was great working with you guys too! I have to agree particularly with this last part-- I know for myself, working on my team's Chairman's submission was one of the most exhausting and rewarding experiences I've ever had on my team. Hopefully we can work together in the future!
As for objectives four and five--
Speaking from personal experience, my team has several reasons that we've kept submitting, even in spite of our rather
tumultuous history with the award. On our rather large team, many people have different reasons for wanting to submit-- many of our build team members want to submit because they want our team to be competitive in everything we do, a reason that I find slightly off-putting but completely valid. Many of our members don't just want to build robots, they want to be
excellent. Another section would be many of our mentors who have been with the team for so long-- they can remember the first time we submitted, in 2008, and want to "finish what we started." They can remember "losing" year after year to other incredibly inspirational programs, such at 2169 and 1816. Of course, there are also some of us that just want the validation that what we've been doing hasn't been for nothing-- students like me that have poured their hearts into our submission, outreach, and FIRST in general. For us, it's about the outreach and the experience.
For me, the entire exercise has been so intrinsically rewarding-- it helps everyone consider what exactly our priorities as a team are. It gives us, as Mr. Bydlon so accurately pointed our, a way of connecting with others in our community. If my team hadn't decided to pursue Chairman's, I wouldn't have had the opportunity to meet Renee Becker, Danny Blau, My Bydlon, Evan Hochenstein, and many of the students on teams 3313 Mechatronics, 2470 Blitz Team, and 3184 Blaze Robotics. As a student, my experience with the Chairman's Award has been eye-opening. In my opinion, if submitting Chairman's has given, or will give any other student a similarly marvelous experience to the one I've had, it's something worth doing. If I was waist deep in FIRST before Chairman's, I'm practically six feet under now.
To address objective one, I think that the Chairman's Award-- the submission, video, presentation, and outreach activities related are incredibly important for any FIRST team-- they're an outlet for both the people that are interested but can't get their heads around the concept of a wrench and the people that fell in love with FIRST and want to give back to their team.
Hopefully this didn't come off as too much a disjointed rant-- I tried my best to keep it pointed.