Ken's Writing Challenge

[Ken Leung]

***Updated 2008 Challenge***

I started taking writing seriously when I begin to participate actively in the Chief Delphi Forum. That definition of "writing" was very broad, though, because it varied from asking for contact info of teams I never even heard of, to commenting on a new game. Nevertheless, it was a big deal for me - I never spent so much time thinking in the English Language since coming to the US 13 years ago at the age of twelve.

Once I started, I could not stop. I found myself thinking about writing when I was riding on the train, when I was walking around downtown San Francisco, when I was at a FIRST competition. All sorts of questions became interesting to me: FIRST, school, the American culture, growing up, and so on.

Then I wrote an extremely tremendously enormously wordy piece talking about my FIRST experience, and felt my life changed forever. I haven't stopped thinking about what I want to write since then, the latest being "With one arm we will hold onto one another.". (It's very easy to search for the other pieces, just search for threads I started in General Forum)

I want to share this experience with other students, and this is the perfect place because FIRST is designed to get students thinking about what they want before their life is about to be turned upside down. So I came up with an idea.

This is Ken's Writing Challenge:

I challenge all students in FIRST, high school or college, and all mentors in FIRST, to sit down and spend some time writing for one of three topics. There is no restriction on the writing other than its topic. There are no word limits, though I want to stress the importance of learning to communicate effectively in a concise, logical, and focused manner.

I also challenge you to write for yourself and no others. You should be your own coach, and your own critic, because when it comes down to it, it does not matter what others think about you. Only what you think matters.

And I challenge you to take this seriously, to treat this as an intellectual exercise in writing skills development, and as an opportunity to organize and understand your thoughts.

You may select one of three topics.

Topic #1: The Past
Tell us about a single problem humanity has been facing in the past and still have not solve today. Tell us why we need to care about this problem. Tell us what the world is and isn't doing to fix it, and tell us what FIRST students can do in the future about it.

Topic #2: The Present
Think back on everything happened since you began the 2008 FIRST season when school started last fall. Contemplate every experience you have gone through, and tell us what you learned about yourself, your team, your mentors, your FIRST community, your culture, your world, your education, your life, or your future, from this one year you spent in FIRST.

Topic #3: The Future
Think about our world today, and tell us where you think FIRST is and should be heading in the future. Consider first: What impacts have made in our culture? What have we really accomplished in the past 15 years? Is it worth making a big fuzz out of all these? Then imagine yourself to be the President of FIRST, and tell us what kind of future you envision for us. Tell us why should we spend so much time and energy in a mere robotics competition, and tell us the things you want to do with this organization and community.

But that's not all! Aside from asking each and everyone of you to pick up a pen and start writing, I calling to make this a community effort. As such, we should all come together and help each other to get better at writing, to get better at critiquing, to get better at thinking, and get better at working together. So, as the last part of this writing challenge, I challenge this community to take ownership of this idea, to use it as an opportunity to motivate and support each other, and to make it a better challenge every year.

That is Ken's Writing Challenge.


Too easy? Too tough? Need clarification? Feel free to post a question and comment in this thread.

Ready to post your submission? Simply take a deep breath, post it in this thread, and watch what people think about it.

[Stephi Rae]

A valid challenge, and one that I can honestly say that I have been waiting for. Each opportunity presented to me to write about my experience thus far has fallen short of my desire to express what I have felt. They have asked for much less than I wanted to share. You can expect my best, no more than a week from now.

All I can say is THANK YOU!

[JaneYoung]

Ken,
This is a remarkable challenge.
It is such a special opportunity for people who love to write or want to try to express their thoughts via your challenge.

I've given it a bit of thought since your post and have 4 things:
1. do you have a deadline? (I may have overlooked it if you stated one)
2. may the student write on more than one topic submitting each as a separate entry?
3. maybe the ones you select for viewing/reading could be offered to the FIRST website.
4. there are writers among mentors, parents, adults who are not attending school - who may have a muse waiting for an opportunity to inspire them. Perhaps you could offer a second separate challenge to those who might be interested.

Thank you Ken.
Jane

[Ken Leung]

Jane,

Great thoughts. Let me respond to them:

1. I intentionally did not set a deadline because, first of all, I know how difficult the writing process is and sometimes I find myself turned into a vegetable under pressure of a deadline. Second, I know students can get really busy with school, FIRST, and study for SATs and other standardized testing. So, I would rather they made submissions through out the year. Interesting thing to work on during the summer or on vacation .

2. I already have someone telling me he is going to write on all three topics. I originally though it might help students by making them focus on one topic only, but then again, why not all three. But I ask you to submit only once for each topic.

3. With enough interests, and enough submissions, I would love to show the writing to everyone in the FIRST community, with the permission of the author of course.

4. I naturally assumed adults are going to be busy, but with enough interest, I would love to receive submissions from them (#3 should be interesting to the adults). There is no judging process in the moment, since I am still seeing how much interests there are, but if we get that far, the adults' submission will be judged seperately.

[Ken Leung]

So far I have a couple of people telling me they are eager to tackle this challenge on all THREE topics, which I did not expect!

I know I should've said this in the original post, but please reply to this thread if you are interested in this challenge. I am still trying to see if there's enough interest to make it worth doing. I am tempted to say Let's go ahead and do it even if I only receive a few submissions, but the more the merrier.

If the topics are too vague or not explained well enough, please let me know. I will do the best I can to clarify them. But like most writing, I often don't know exactly what my topic is until I am three words away from finishing, so it's challenging for me to come up with topics.

[MGoelz]

This is such a marvelous idea. I can't wait to get started. This is really going to help me evaluate the grand scheme of things (through my Past), what I've learned this far, and have accomplished this year (Present), and how to improve everything in years to come, not only for myself, but the future participants of FIRST (future). Thanks for the great idea, and superb challenge.

I am one of those people that plan on tackling all three topics.

[i_stainbrook]

I'm definitely interested. I'll try to get the rest of my team on board as well.

[Kyle]

Like I told you in the IM I am going to take up your challenge.

[Ken Leung]

Someone mentioned to me there is a conflict when on the one hand I ask students to be independent thinkers, and on the other hand I only allow the students to post their submissions publically after I've OK them.

I realize I should've been more clear about that.

When I am checking a submission, I just want to make sure the students responded to one of the topics and not some other ones, or mix up all three together. I want to watch out for things against the forum's rules, such as inappropriate words or discussions of warez. I also want to make sure each person is only submitting one piece for each topic. That's all.

It's a mere formality. I will not block submissions because I disagree with them or don't like them.

I may suggest some changes on grammars and comment on whether the writing make logical sense or not, but I will still OK a submission if those suggestions are not followed.


The latter part I might take more seriously because this is a great chance to help the students improve their writing skills. I might just let every submission with grammar and other sorts of mistakes get publiched, and setup a formal process where I ask some FIRST mentors to help review the writings and give the students helpful suggestions on how they can improve their writing. But I need to think more on that.

Again, the more submissions the better .

-Ken L

[Ken Leung]

Just a quick reminder about this challenge.

There's probably no better time to write than a 3 day weekend !

[Bomberofdoom]

Amazing idea! Not only does it practice some of our writing skills, but it could help us practice write compositions, like the one we need to send to TIMS at the end of the building process.

This could also be a challenge for us to see how much time it takes us to do a long composition, not necessarly about the same topic, but as much the same amount of words to write, not under pressure, and to estimate when's the best time to start sitting down and writing it.

I accept your challenge Ken and throughout the summer I'll be going over these topics.

Thank you very much Ken for thinking it up! I'll try to convience my friends to try it to (although they'll probablly get lazy this summer ).

Thanks.

[Libby K]

Color me interested!

Now, to find some of that ever-elusive time...

[JaneYoung]

Just curious, did anyone take up this challenge and participate?

(I know Ken is a bit busy right now. ) but...

It is a great challenge.

Jane

[Ken Leung]

Jane, and all others interested in this challenge, I would like to present to you our first entry:

Qualifying Match #8

James Taylor (2199)

Topic #2: The Present
Think back on everything happened since you began the 2007 FIRST season when school started last fall. Contemplate every experience you have gone through, and tell us what you learned about yourself, your team, your mentors, your FIRST community, your culture, your world, your education, your life, or your future, from this one year you spent in FIRST.

Enjoy.

Qualifying Match #8

James Taylor (2199)

It's 9PM and I'm standing in an elevator in the Hampton Inn at Annapolis. A fit guy in black and green stands in the corner opposite me, shirt lined with homemade buttons. They form an almost sash around the team number across his chest.

"Robotics?"

"Robotics."

We both nod, already knowing enough about each other than riding an elevator with someone should tell you. We get off and head into the lobby, sit down on opposite sides of the TV to signify our teams. Karrah slides closer to the TV to give me a seat next to her on the faux-rock ledge. Now, with everyone gathered, maybe 40 or 50 of us, there's a flood of light blue and camouflage taking over the hotel. Mr. Eastman walks to the center of the circle.

"Tomorrow morning, the final qualifying matches are going on. By some luck we're allied for the first match and got into the same hotel. So we have until then to get a plan together, because we both need to win this. Let's throw some ideas out there."

And somehow, with an ungodly amount of teenagers in an unknown city, there is order. We spend the next hour talking with each other about how we could possibly work together to make this match go down the way we want it to. Everyone throws something into the discussion, it gets thought about and either becomes a real consideration or just a possible idea. We're running back up to our rooms every couple of minutes to get the scouting sheets we all prepared, to get our lists of tools and parts, to get the bowl of ramen off the coffee maker before we burn the place down.

And in the morning we all wake up, all of us having the same elevator ride from last night only with different people as we slowly make our way into the lobby for continental breakfasts. We eat with new friends and new teammates, share bad coffee and undercooked bacon while talking about mechanics I can only try to understand. I know how to write a press release and talk to sponsors; the difference between screw sizes is beyond me. Eventually 2199 congregates together and we all go over last night's plans, have Rubin tell all of us in public relations that scouting and interviewing is going to be more important than ever today and despite the incredible monotony of the process it was a necessity. There is a grudging agreement as we all remember sitting in bleachers filling out scouting sheets for what was most of our Friday. It's for the team, after all.

On the bus ride to the Naval Academy, Clancy and I argue about the success of the ramen while the engineers try to draw up arm modification plans on the back of a shaking seat. There's a general unspoken hope that our bus driver doesn't get lost and hit a gas pump again. He manages not to.

At the Academy, PR makes its way to the stands, engineers go to the pits. Karrah escapes discussion of preferred cereals and who has the best idea for variations of monopoly. After dealing with incredible amounts of mechanical knowledge, sometimes mindless discussion or just being alone for a few minutes is totally necessary. And the emcee starts speaking and we see Nick and Nick wheeling out the robot while Ben and Rubin talk strategy with the guys from the hotel. Pretty soon the robots are on the field and everyone in PR has a scouting sheet on our laps.

There is a surprising electricity in our section. For as much as we all love the team and talked it up, no one really thought a whole lot about one match mattering. It's our rookie year, you don't get near the finals rookie year, it's just natural. But we have a chance of actually winning now and it's incredible. No one really mentions it, but with Alex looking up from his programming to watch the match, we know it's important.

And the clock starts and none of us score autonomous. No big loss.

And 2 minutes and we start moving. We're scoring tubes while the other teams run perfect interference; we're scoring better than we possibly thought. And then we're winning. We're actually winning. Up until 10 last night, we had seen this as a lost cause.

And the match ends and our alliance won. High fives all around, me yelling obscenities to Seipp and Clancy as is the general match winning behavior. Pretty soon, Aaron's running out from the pits with the score.

We're eighth. Rookie year, last qualifying match, we're eighth. We have a real shot to seed. There is this insane joy running through everyone on the team as we here this, people like me who had gotten into robotics for college now actually pumped up to be doing well, it was amazing. It was the validation for all our work, for the money we'd spent, for all the fund raising and early wake ups and long discussions we'd had in Dietrich's room. We'd done well.

And we ended up placing eleventh after the rest of the qualifying matches, which was still great since the top seeded alliances picked lower seeded ones which pushed us into seed eight. And nah, we didn't win the regional. We got close but we fell off a ramp. But that doesn't matter.

In that one moment, that one planned perfection of our qualifying match eight, in that incredible combination of teamwork, engineering, scouting and luck, we were justified. All of our work meant something, all of us were thrilled, and we were a team. And I can't think of any more definitive moment of FIRST than that.

[Ken Leung]

Jane pointed out the importance of being able to spot light and give the author rep points, so with that in mind I will have to come up with a better way of evaluating these essays and getting the author to post the writing instead of me doing it.

But a bit busy at the moment, so, consider this a work in progress .