UNgracious UNprofessionalism

[Andrew Schreiber]

Originally Posted by flargen507

I encourage all of you to try and understand the situation I am coming from, and at least give my point some thought, even if you don't agree with it.

No. I will never give the side of celebrating mediocrity a thought.

That's precisely what you are doing, you are consoling yourself with the thought that, while you failed at achieving the game challenge you are still better than those punks who had their mentors build it all for them! You are celebrating failure. And that's on top of the fact that you are demonizing the very teams that get what FIRST is about.

And you know what? Your students need to hear that. They need to hear that they need to get their butts out there and fundraise and make partnerships with industry. When 79 didn't play in eliminations at CMP last year after seeding 9th I didn't console our kids. They asked why we didn't play and I told them honestly, "because we sucked, we didn't work hard enough. We felt entitled to success. This is what that kind of attitude gets". And yes, it angered some students. And I'm sure quite a few parents didn't particularly enjoy me telling their kids that. But we hit the ground running this year and most of the kids I told that to? They worked their butts off.

I guess my entire point is, I won't consider your thought process because it is dangerous. It is poisonous. I will never accept failure and you shouldn't either.