[Bharat Nain]

Jacob, I'll post my perspective on GP and maybe you will understand what people like Woodie Flowers think. I know this because I have been fortunate enough to have a couple discussions with him. Gracious Professionalism is an act, internal ruler, anything you want to call it to teach the students(and leaders of tomorrow) how to be friendly, ethical, moral, firm, competitive, smart all at the same time. The world out there does not practice Gracious Professionalism and therefore there is a lot of unethical and immoral practices that need to be stopped. If we teach the students today how to practice Gracious Professionalism, then tomorrow we will have a better world of free enterprise, better jobs and better neighbors. You get where I am going with this? As Dean Kamen and others say, "FIRST is a microcosm of the real world". That's why FIRST does not have to be perfect, fair or in complete submission to gracious professionalism. If they did that, then our games would be boring and would contain no element of defense, pushing, or anything really. It would be a simple game pure offense which is not really fun. Gracious Professionalism also builds character. What do you do when the team in the pits next to you tells you that your robot sucks? Do you make a big deal out of it or do you understand that they are still probably new to FIRST or have not embraced the ideals of FIRST and let them be.

Many teams demonstrated Gracious Professionalism this year. We all know that in the first couple weeks of competition there were problems with the scoring, sometimes referees, robot inspectors etc. Teams did not make a huge fuss about this even though they could have. Everyone makes mistakes, including FIRST. Forgiveness is another trait of people and teams who practice Gracious Professionalism.

So all in all, we do not need to eliminate every little thing in FIRST that might threaten to be anti-GP. It is okay for these things to be there because not everyone can win the competition, chairmans award, WFA, website award, inventor award all at once. Sometimes, you work hard for an award and don't get it. That's okay. Someone else worked harder. Sometimes there is a radio issue in the final match of the regional. You know your robot was disabled and it is not your fault. That's okay. Is it anti-GP from the field crew or IFI? I don't know, maybe. But you have to deal with it with GP. When you are the finalist and they play a song like Queen's-We are the champions, you really should be happy for the winning alliance and never accept defeat in your mind. Your alliance very well could have been the winning alliance. Sometimes, there is only so much you can do and the rest is left upto the environment, high power, anything you believe. Okay, enough. I have just tried to put my unorganized thoughts down. But I hope you see what I am trying to say about GP.