What is Important?

[keehun]

Hi ChiefDelphi,

This post is not a result of some bad behavior that I noticed or anything like that. I have just been thinking a lot about what is important as I take care of most of the busy work for our team in the background.

I am not a good writer, so I hope you stick with me fore a little bit here! Also, the voice of this is speaking mainly to students. But mentors, feel free to tweak the voice that is appropriate to you!

First, the facts.

Our robotics season is constrained to just a mere 6 weeks. That gives us approximately 1~2 weeks to design, 4~5 weeks to build, and if your team is skilled and organized enough, a week to test. This means that everybody is on the adrenaline rush most of the time. This also has many implications. Situations may get tense, somebody may make a mistake, someone may get hurt, and the robot may look as if it will never get done in time.

Second, the feelings
I know that a vast majority of us have strong opinions of many things, and with that comes implications such as being competitive, being perfectionist, and being a leader. Being competitive seems to be the big thing. We have 6 weeks and everything has to be perfect. If you machine a bracket that's off and now your team's progress is delayed two days, you may get some bad talk. You want to build the best freaking robot on the face of planet earth. The pressure is on

Third, what is important
What is truly important people, is the relationships you form around them. What will you care about when the robotics-related things are over? What will you care about when you're much older? What will you care about when you have your first kid?

Is the value of this tangible robot greater than the warmth of the bond that you form with others? Who cares about the person holding the trophy? When you are suffering, surely, you will not seek comfort from the trophy...

Relationships and who you are as a person is really what's important in the scope of eternity. I hope you will remember that as pressure builds and builds over the course of this season. Remember that it is a blessing to be able to work in such an intelligent and motivated and dedicated group of students.

It's not what you make but the relationships that you bake! So, try to get to know everyone's names! Try to get to know everyone's favorite band or that one time in Florida that they just hated. Try to get to know their background. A true team can only be formed by people who care about each other and that have a common goal...

... For example, I found out that one of our students had gone through a TOUGH time. Mom passed away, dad remarried, step-siblings are troubling, etc... The thing is, this new freshman is our best new member and probably one of the best members we've had around for a while; I would've never known that he had gone through all the troubles in life if I hadn't spent some time with him apart from just "OH DUDE GET THAT GEARBOX ON, NOW". Now I have a bit better understanding on how he approaches things and life... I'm sure this story could be replicated to many of us here.

I don't know why I decided to post this... I just had an epiphany that there are things more important than robotics, jobs, school, and the busy work of life...

Keehun


P.S. There's an exercise I would like you to try.

Take a sheet of paper and draw a timeline (you can partition it to new but continuous lines to fit it on paper) of your entire life. Birth to death. Obviously, you won't know when you'll die but just draw the line and tick marks until you think you will die. My teacher who showed me this drew it until her 84th birthday.

Starting from birth, try to remember the important milestones in your life and then rate them from +5 to -5. +5 being when your kid was born or something that you'll remember forever till the day you die. And then -5 the same thing but for different reasons. Even if you don't remember them personally.

(For instance, I don't ever remember my maternal grandfather as he passed away when I was very little... However I do remember my parents being gone for a week and that was traumatic. I remember having a lot of fun with my paternal-grandmother for the entire week but I still remember it being "traumatic" because the parents were gone). I would rate that a -3.

Go draw it now!

When you finish drawing the spike-filled timeline, you will notice that the +/-5s isn't that BMW M3 car you bought or that one time where you won for the first time at a competition. It... ALL about your relationships...

Something to ponder about... Life.