Quote:
Originally Posted by flargen507
I have noticed a significant number of similar threads, and to be honest similar posts in this thread about how many of these comments are ungracious, unprofessional, and sometimes seem predatory and rude. And your probably right. Responding to the original poster from team 701, I am from team 159 and I was also at Colorado this weekend (which I think may be part of the reason why you are posting this). I must also say that we are coming off of a very tough regional, so I apologize in advance if this sounds overly harsh. I think what you must realize (for most of your teams if I'm honest) is that your are in the upper echelon of FIRST teams. Many robots at any given regional have trouble scoring any points at all. In our case, our robot only moved in 3 matches the entire weekend (yes that includes practice, all of which we attended). And yes we are a student built robot, and are almost fanatically proud about being so. While it sounds great in practice, and in principle I agree that going around accusing teams that their robot was built by their mentors is unprofessional and can be rude. But I just had the experience of having to look at 30 depressed and distraught faces about a regional where our robot barely moved. Do you want me to look at them and tell them that our robot lost because the other teams were just way better than us and all of their hard work and pain wasn't good enough? Sometimes to keep a group of kids to not just quit out of anger you have to console them. Sometimes that means telling them that those other teams were a bunch of mentor bots just to keep the peace. Is it the nicest thing to do? No. Is it the most gracious thing to do? No. But at that point it is one of the only ways to keep inspiring that group of kids. And as Libbey Kamen said, you cannot judge other teams for the way they inspire the kids. So in that case as the better team, the one who is having the more successful regional, be the better team and realize that it is very hard for a group of high school students to look at failure in the face, especially in a competition where the differences in performance can be so vast. Understand what you would feel like if some other team has a more beautiful, more successful robot even after you worked so hard and understand sometimes you just need to blow off some steam. And as for the smashing other robots, I can say that I am guilty of that as well. We smashed the robot of one of the best teams at our regional (in one of only 3 matches we functioned). I am proud to say that I cheered, because it was at that point it was the only real thing our robot had done. Was it perhaps a little callous? Yes. But they were still able to repair it before the next match, and they are now going to nationals, so honestly they can't complain too much. But that moment was what really defined our entire season of work, and if that cost another team some hard work and stress then so be it. Again, this may sound a little angry, and it is probably a little too soon after such a hard loss to see this clearly, but I still think that both sides of this issue need to be observed.
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Holy crap. This is NOT the sort of attitude I expect from a
4 time Regional Chairman's Award winning team (with an EI to boot). Also, 159 has been at championship each year from 1998 to 2011.
I can't say for sure if you were part of 159 for all this time, or joined more recently (say, in 2012), but wow.
You need a really big attitude check, and to take a serious look at the lessons you are (intentionally, or unintentionally) teaching the students in your care.