[MGoelz]

Gracious Professionalism means so many things. It makes everyone strive to work harder and entices everyone to live up to higher expectations. It gives everyone a humanitarian challenge to work for.

It also just sounds very complicated and worth the effort. Really, how often do people outside of FIRST tell you to use gracious professionalism? This is something that gives all of we students a quality that most are not consciously aware of. This is what determines what kind of person you will turn out to be. And with this kind of standard, I know that I won't become someone that I would be ashamed of. It makes me have higher standards for myself and for my team.

It's through gracious professionalism, that FIRST has become the community that it is. Sure, it's competitive, but we also learn a lot of skills, and not all of them have to do with math/science, or engineering. We make friends with other teams, and once a bond is there, it is rarely broken. There is a lot to be said about what gracious professionalism has done to FIRST and the people within it. Without it, FIRST really would just be a program with a lost motive.