[PayneTrain]

(Let me preface this by saying I am taking a study break from preparing for a test that I will hopefully do well enough on I can justify taking a ...vacation from college next weekend in St. Louis, and I begin the time on my study break at 4:31 AM local time by writing this post. This is going to be long and winding, but I hope it's worth it)

I had the pleasure of working alongside a very dedicated and capable Chairman's submission team this year on 2614. Some people mistake whatever I do to be "mentoring," after which I joke "Mentors are qualified professionals, I'm just a kid who finds not being involved with a FIRST team boring." I worked on wordsmithing with them, focusing on attracting the judges to the team, and encouraging the highlighting of unique activities the team accomplished. While the team finished with Engineering Inspiration where they submitted (being beaten by one of the most CCA worthy-but-never-noticed-by-community-at-large Team 1311) I learned as much working with them as I did as a student on my years at 422. I was never an attendee at an outreach event, but I could see the impact. I could feel it. In traditional competitions, most would see EI as second place, or a consolation prize, but it doesn't matter. When people say winning isn't everything in FIRST, they shouldn't reference what's happening on the field. Not winning the Chairman's Award isn't going to change the fact that the team is actively pursuing goals to make their state be a beacon for secondary education instead of suffering from tragically low college attendance rates.

Through a series of events, I have wound up taking a more active role on a team 6 hours away from my current residence than I thought I would have. I think the last time I had a wound that drew blood, the color was far from a shade of red, it looked green and had little particulates of aluminum in it. Team 422 seriously took me from being a worthless teenager to a slightly less worthless and far more focused individual. My time in FIRST can be marked through a series of epiphanies. My first as a freshman was "Man, this robot stuff is cool, I think I'll stick with it," so I stuck with it. Sophomore me said, "Man I wish this team could win something," so I looked into what made other teams "click" and I tried to find local support to make it happen. My junior year had me come away with "This 'team' needs to be better at this whole 'team' thing." I made a fair share of personal sacrifice (a big deal for a self-obsessed teenager) to try to focus the team towards being something bigger than 20 people who cobbled together a machine once a year. I helped the team double its revenue and submitted the first Chairman's Award and Woodie Flowers Award submissions for the first time in years, knowing full well that that was hardware we would not be taking home.

We finished second in what the greater community considers a forgettable regional and stumbled upon an Innovation in Control Award at a later event, before a strategic miscue on my part caused the team to "rank too high" to win the event, sending us out in the quarterfinals (ironically to 2614's alliance).

A week later my grandmother was diagnosed with advanced pancreatic cancer and given months to live, so I was forced to take a big step back from the team.

Within a week, my grandmother died, I graduated from high school, and we buried her. That week, everything really hit me. She made such an enormous impact on my life. She was strong, courageous, honest, respectful, and dutiful to whatever she set her mind to. She was quick to drop everything and help others in need without question. She was a rock for me. FIRST made an impact on my life as well, one so enormous I will never be able to adequately translate it in a thousand lifetimes. FIRST was also my rock.

I realized that during my tenure on Team 422, we never reached enough people. We were a single high school robotics teams in one of the poorest sections of the most underprivileged cities in our state, and we did not do enough. We did not make enough of an impact. We did not do the hard work that needed to be done to galvanize and invigorate a community where hope can seem fleeting. We let the mediocre status quo outside of our walls continue for four years while we slowly tried to get our act together after an intra-team schism. But there are people who would drop anything in a heartbeat to help others, to become a part of something greater than themselves, like my grandmother.

This year, the outreach department on Team 422 has grown from an army of one in 2012 (me) to over a dozen students, parents, mentors, and alumni who are focused on doing something that really matters. Our kids are going to do well in school. Our kids are going to college. Honestly, our school is a commonly mocked bastion for privileged individuals that does not do enough in the community. We're not changing the culture that way.

JVN once said there is a time where you stop being a "fake mentor" and start becoming a "real" one when you're in it for the right reasons. I did what I like to call "consulting work" for 422 throughout various parts of the fall and spring of this operational year. However, one student on the outreach team, Matt Aldridge, changed that. If you have bothered to skim through one of my preachy-looking posts in the past, you would know of my high opinion of him. He was an incoming freshman on the team when I was a junior. I thought he was shy and borderline useless at first, but I have gotten to know him as a cancer survivor that does not let it define him. He is our greatest strength, and I mentor for people like him. He is the only Dean's List Finalist the team has ever had, and he is one of my role models. When I co-wrote his essay with another mentor, I closed the essay by writing that his ability to inspire everyone he met, even us crotchety mentors, really changed us. And it has. It's made me do this for the right reasons. I don't do this because I want the robot to win (though it's preferable to not winning).

The robots get scavenged for parts eventually, and their frames are busted apart and sold for scrap metal. The positive impacts we can make on people in our community are as permanent and real as the dust that brings us to this earth and returns us when we are over. But Matt gets that. Now the whole team gets it, and I get it too.

Our goals aren't just finishing the robot on time or maybe getting kinda close to winning a blue banner once every Martian year, but it's to change people. It's to see it in the eyes of kids who thought they had no future, it's in the eyes of a politician looking to build a legacy, it's in the eyes of a parent who realizes this program can send her kid to college, and it's in our hearts. When you sign on to submit a Chairman's Award, it's important to think about you in relation to the team, and vice versa.

But we come together to build a robot, an object brought to life and made greater than the sum of its parts. Our brains, our hearts, and our lungs come together to give us life that not one of them could sustain on its own. People come together to form a team that is greater than the sum of the individuals that comprise it. The team then acts like a boulder falling from the highest mountain and crashing into the deepest ravine, making a powerful, awesome impact that cannot be questioned, cannot be diminished, and cannot be defined by check-boxes on a list or trophies in a case.

When you sign up to submit for a Chairman's Award, you commit yourself to the mission that is bigger than you. The banners may you win will fade and the trophies will go ignored, but you will always remember when you sat down with your team and decided to become something greater than yourselves.

That's why you submit for Chairman's.