Has anyone stopped to think... "Its just plastic"?
Maybe its just me, and trust me, I am so proud of my team for the awards that they have won, but I would be proud of them no matter what. Our students are learning and growing, and we are inspiring them, and to me thats far more important than if some CEO denied us a piece of plastic because we didnt have enough reduced lunches or our budget was larger than another teams.
And maybe its just me, but LIFE ISNT FAIR. There is bias and political moves everywhere. I work in an engineering company, if you piss off the wrong person, you wont climb the ladder. Its a fact of life, and as much as I want to shield my kids from it, its true. But in the end, I would hope that being happy doing what we do, doing your job in the end is more important than a title on your office door or money falling out of your pockets. FIRST is much the same for me. I care less what a judge thinks about our team than what we think of ourselves.
Take a step back and realize that its really not that big of a deal. FIRST is just trying to give some background info to the judges. If a judge walked up to your pit and asked a student what award they thought their team most wanted to win, would you duct tape their mouth shut?? If a judge was local and knew a team was from a city school and pulled their robot together on a shoestring budget, but saw in the paper that Harris spends 8 bajillion dollars on their team, would you want them to consider both teams on exactly the same level? I certainly don't. Another example is that I try to get each of my students to rise to their own capabilities. If I know they are capable of more, I push them, even if they are already doing 3 times what the next student is. I'm going to challenge them on their own levels. And I want our teams to be the same. I dont want the judges to compare our team on an equal level to a high school non sponsored team that barely scraped together $6k. I want the judges to expect that team's best out of them, just like I want the judges to expect our best out of us. Its all different levels and Im not at all offended or ashamed to give any answers asked.
I do admit when I first looked at those questions I did wonder why it mattered, but then I realized, it doesn't matter to us. If everyone is honest, I trust that the judges will make the best decisions possible. Saying that these CEO's, VP's and Marketing Directors cant be trusted to make unbiased decisions just isnt fair. We dont know them, we have no idea what they are going to base their decisions on, and we can hope that they are going to go by the criteria of the award and make the best decisions they possibly can.
Again... maybe its just me...
