[Jaine Perotti]

FIRST does many many wonderful things. It has inspired, motivated, and changed the lives of many adults and students for the better. For me, the FIRST experience has transcended above all of the other extracurriculars I've ever been involved in. In fact, I don't even consider FIRST to be an extracurricular anymore; it is a way of life.

However, as with any aspect of life, FIRST grows and changes. FIRST's mission has always been to inspire young people to have a greater appreciation and understanding of science and technology. So far, they have been quite successful in that mission. But in continuing to provide these wonderful opportunities, FIRST must try to implement better methods of doing so. Just as we try to improve our robots every season, FIRST tries to improve the experience that it gives to us every year.

In designing robots, we make hypotheses about what mechanical, electrical, or coding system will work the best. We use all our knowledge of these disciplines to help us take an educated guess at what will give us the desired results. But we can never really know what the outcome will be, until we test the robot in competition. Sometimes robots will perform beautifully, and do what they were expected to do without a hitch. But other times (and we have all experienced this), our design hypothesis turns out to be flawed, and we must start back at square one to reflect on what went wrong ...and consequently redesign.

Analogous to this is the 'design' of FIRST itself. All of the dedicated individuals who are a part of FIRST want to make it even better than it already is. They come up with a 'hypothesis' for success, just as we come up with a 'hypothesis' for our robot design. FIRST tries to improve yearly, and often FIRST is successful. But other times, FIRST may make an incorrect hypothesis, and things may not turn out as smoothly as we would all like them to be.

When a team's robot turns out to have an unsuccessful design, one thing I never see at competitions are people being negative toward that team; no booing, no ridiculing, no negative comments. This is because of the spirit of gracious professionalism: an underlying element of the FIRST experience. I see people willing to reach out to the teams who have been unsuccessful. People who understand what it means to be constructive and give advice to improve their robot 'hypotheses'. People who recognize the importance of making the FIRST Robotics Competition more dynamic, inspiring, ...and fun. People who we should try to emulate.

If only more people could have the same attitude toward FIRST as they do toward their fellow teams!
Just like we give constructive feedback to those who are less experienced at robot design, we should be giving constructive feedback to FIRST! Just as it is unacceptable to be negative and demeaning to the less outstanding teams at a competition, it is unacceptable to be negative and demeaning to FIRST when they turn out to be wrong.

We all know that nothing gets done when all you do is trash talk another team. We should also realize that we will not help to improve FIRST by dismissing something as "stupid" or "bad" without offering a better solution. It is time we start applying the principles of GP found at competitions ...to our own conduct outside the competition. Be constructive! Offer input that will help FIRST improve! Let them know what they are doing wrong in a respectful manner; that way they will be even more willing to listen to you. This is what we do when we help each other... so lets start doing this when we want to help FIRST!


-- Jaine