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#46
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Re: Why even bother submitting a Chairman's Award if we're not gonna win?
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#47
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Re: Why even bother submitting a Chairman's Award if we're not gonna win?
We submitted for the first time ever this year - as we recently transitioned from a build-season team to a full-year team. We weren't going to, and then I was talking to another mentor from another team and she said that we should because we'd done a LOT this year and have great plans for the future.
So we did. The kids did the essay and the executive summary, as well as the video, and the presentation. The three girls who gave the presentation learned it in 2 days (yeah, we work under pressure) and they killed it in front of the judges. I was so proud of the work that they had done - and I'm still so proud of them. We learned a lot about ourselves as a team, with what we'd accomplished this year and what we hope to do in the future. The kids all said that it was a great learning experience overall and they'd definitely do it again. I think Chairman's is an award that you earn over time, I know that being a first year submitting team that I didn't think that we'd win, but I was very surprised at the extremely positive feedback from the judges. It will help us work on things to make us a stronger team and we'll submit again next year, and the year after, and the year after. The kids are really developing good presentation skills with this, as well as improving their writing skills. I agree with others that at least writing a submission for Chairman's even if you don't submit or miss the deadline is a good way to document what you've done over the last year or so and see what else you want to do moving forward. |
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#48
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Re: Why even bother submitting a Chairman's Award if we're not gonna win?
I did not want to answer this until I had a response that I felt was suitable for the question beyond my gut reaction of "because it is a great experience for your team!"
I wrote the 2011 submission for my team. I was inspired by what my team had done the year before with their submission and so I decided to take lead on a task that I had little to no experience on. I think it was very well said so far in the thread how being able to go through the process is extremely beneficial. The essay and presentation will put you leaps ahead in your communication and writing skills but there is something much more rewarding about submitting a Chairman's Award. A Chairman's submission is the casting of a step. Each year your team goes out and does what your team does. Whether it is school demos, recruitment drives or something completely different. Every team has something they do and every team is unique in that way. The submission is your chance to try and sum up everything you and your team has done and what you are the most proud of. In that sense, you essentially leave your mark on the team. You are saying that up until this point, here is everything our team in proud of including the contributions of my year-my generation. The submission becomes your baby in a way. You are so proud of what you have done and why not? Any team that has the will to go through the submission process IS a Chairman's team already. At the end of the competition, sitting in your seats will be a truly scary experience. What happens next. Well that does not really matter. You have already accomplished what you set out to do. All your contributions are kept in your submission. A submission which will continue to live on with not only your team but with you as a person. Every year I come back to listen to our presentation and read our submission. Every year I tune in to see how my team does at the competitions because still till this day, I feel like my contributions are still there. That future generations will continue to build on what my generation left and every submission that my team will ever submit will contain a piece of me in some way shape or form. Losing does not change this. Seeing our robot each year is exciting. Watching it compete is always a fun experience but it will never truly be the same as it did when I was still a student on the team. But every year, when the moment comes to announce the Chairman's award at any of our competitions, I feel the same tingles and butterflies in my stomach that I did in 2011. It is one of the strongest and most rewarding bonds I have been able to form with the program and with my team. I will always encourage everyone to submit for the Chairman's award and I will always applaud those who do. Last edited by fuzzwaz : 17-04-2013 at 03:16. |
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#49
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Re: Why even bother submitting a Chairman's Award if we're not gonna win?
(Let me preface this by saying I am taking a study break from preparing for a test that I will hopefully do well enough on I can justify taking a ...vacation from college next weekend in St. Louis, and I begin the time on my study break at 4:31 AM local time by writing this post. This is going to be long and winding, but I hope it's worth it)
I had the pleasure of working alongside a very dedicated and capable Chairman's submission team this year on 2614. Some people mistake whatever I do to be "mentoring," after which I joke "Mentors are qualified professionals, I'm just a kid who finds not being involved with a FIRST team boring." I worked on wordsmithing with them, focusing on attracting the judges to the team, and encouraging the highlighting of unique activities the team accomplished. While the team finished with Engineering Inspiration where they submitted (being beaten by one of the most CCA worthy-but-never-noticed-by-community-at-large Team 1311) I learned as much working with them as I did as a student on my years at 422. I was never an attendee at an outreach event, but I could see the impact. I could feel it. In traditional competitions, most would see EI as second place, or a consolation prize, but it doesn't matter. When people say winning isn't everything in FIRST, they shouldn't reference what's happening on the field. Not winning the Chairman's Award isn't going to change the fact that the team is actively pursuing goals to make their state be a beacon for secondary education instead of suffering from tragically low college attendance rates. Through a series of events, I have wound up taking a more active role on a team 6 hours away from my current residence than I thought I would have. I think the last time I had a wound that drew blood, the color was far from a shade of red, it looked green and had little particulates of aluminum in it. Team 422 seriously took me from being a worthless teenager to a slightly less worthless and far more focused individual. My time in FIRST can be marked through a series of epiphanies. My first as a freshman was "Man, this robot stuff is cool, I think I'll stick with it," so I stuck with it. Sophomore me said, "Man I wish this team could win something," so I looked into what made other teams "click" and I tried to find local support to make it happen. My junior year had me come away with "This 'team' needs to be better at this whole 'team' thing." I made a fair share of personal sacrifice (a big deal for a self-obsessed teenager) to try to focus the team towards being something bigger than 20 people who cobbled together a machine once a year. I helped the team double its revenue and submitted the first Chairman's Award and Woodie Flowers Award submissions for the first time in years, knowing full well that that was hardware we would not be taking home. We finished second in what the greater community considers a forgettable regional and stumbled upon an Innovation in Control Award at a later event, before a strategic miscue on my part caused the team to "rank too high" to win the event, sending us out in the quarterfinals (ironically to 2614's alliance). A week later my grandmother was diagnosed with advanced pancreatic cancer and given months to live, so I was forced to take a big step back from the team. Within a week, my grandmother died, I graduated from high school, and we buried her. That week, everything really hit me. She made such an enormous impact on my life. She was strong, courageous, honest, respectful, and dutiful to whatever she set her mind to. She was quick to drop everything and help others in need without question. She was a rock for me. FIRST made an impact on my life as well, one so enormous I will never be able to adequately translate it in a thousand lifetimes. FIRST was also my rock. I realized that during my tenure on Team 422, we never reached enough people. We were a single high school robotics teams in one of the poorest sections of the most underprivileged cities in our state, and we did not do enough. We did not make enough of an impact. We did not do the hard work that needed to be done to galvanize and invigorate a community where hope can seem fleeting. We let the mediocre status quo outside of our walls continue for four years while we slowly tried to get our act together after an intra-team schism. But there are people who would drop anything in a heartbeat to help others, to become a part of something greater than themselves, like my grandmother. This year, the outreach department on Team 422 has grown from an army of one in 2012 (me) to over a dozen students, parents, mentors, and alumni who are focused on doing something that really matters. Our kids are going to do well in school. Our kids are going to college. Honestly, our school is a commonly mocked bastion for privileged individuals that does not do enough in the community. We're not changing the culture that way. JVN once said there is a time where you stop being a "fake mentor" and start becoming a "real" one when you're in it for the right reasons. I did what I like to call "consulting work" for 422 throughout various parts of the fall and spring of this operational year. However, one student on the outreach team, Matt Aldridge, changed that. If you have bothered to skim through one of my preachy-looking posts in the past, you would know of my high opinion of him. He was an incoming freshman on the team when I was a junior. I thought he was shy and borderline useless at first, but I have gotten to know him as a cancer survivor that does not let it define him. He is our greatest strength, and I mentor for people like him. He is the only Dean's List Finalist the team has ever had, and he is one of my role models. When I co-wrote his essay with another mentor, I closed the essay by writing that his ability to inspire everyone he met, even us crotchety mentors, really changed us. And it has. It's made me do this for the right reasons. I don't do this because I want the robot to win (though it's preferable to not winning). The robots get scavenged for parts eventually, and their frames are busted apart and sold for scrap metal. The positive impacts we can make on people in our community are as permanent and real as the dust that brings us to this earth and returns us when we are over. But Matt gets that. Now the whole team gets it, and I get it too. Our goals aren't just finishing the robot on time or maybe getting kinda close to winning a blue banner once every Martian year, but it's to change people. It's to see it in the eyes of kids who thought they had no future, it's in the eyes of a politician looking to build a legacy, it's in the eyes of a parent who realizes this program can send her kid to college, and it's in our hearts. When you sign on to submit a Chairman's Award, it's important to think about you in relation to the team, and vice versa. But we come together to build a robot, an object brought to life and made greater than the sum of its parts. Our brains, our hearts, and our lungs come together to give us life that not one of them could sustain on its own. People come together to form a team that is greater than the sum of the individuals that comprise it. The team then acts like a boulder falling from the highest mountain and crashing into the deepest ravine, making a powerful, awesome impact that cannot be questioned, cannot be diminished, and cannot be defined by check-boxes on a list or trophies in a case. When you sign up to submit for a Chairman's Award, you commit yourself to the mission that is bigger than you. The banners may you win will fade and the trophies will go ignored, but you will always remember when you sat down with your team and decided to become something greater than yourselves. That's why you submit for Chairman's. Last edited by PayneTrain : 18-04-2013 at 02:26. Reason: I get belligerent with Spell Check at 5am and decide to ignore it. |
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#50
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Re: Why even bother submitting a Chairman's Award if we're not gonna win?
I want to briefly talk about a team who finally won the Chairman's Award, but would never post on Chief Delphi talking about it. I was hoping that someone else would share their story, but since no one else has yet, I will:
Their motto: "When you lose, say nothing. When you win, say even less." Team 2337, the EngiNERDs, is a Michigan State Championship Chairman's Award winning team. To win the Chairman's Award in Michigan at a District event is a feat. To win at the MSC is outstanding. Think of it this way: Every single team eligible for CA at MSC already won DCA, so you are competing against 11 other accomplished teams. Only three of those 11 amazing teams get the honor of moving up to the next level. This year, 2337 was *finally* one of those teams. That emphasis on finally is my own. For the past three years, I've seen this team as a huge contender for the award, yet they kept getting bypassed by other awesome teams. This year, the EngiNERDs took a different path for their presentation. I hope after Worlds they show a video of it, because it's edgy, risky and all sorts of wonderful. Instead of emphasizing the #,###,### people they impacted, 2337 emphasized the inspiration and impact they've had. Because, how can inspiration and impact be measured by stating a number? In their video, watch carefully, you'll notice one important fact: not ONE person in the video is a member of their team. They have people from other teams, at their school and in their community talking for them. It's creative, simple and very well-produced. Seeing videos like it makes me think how much of a shame it is that CA videos aren't judged. If you're going to Worlds, and you have a spare moment, track down 2337 in the Galileo pits. Talk to some of their students (doing that always makes me smile) and chat with their mentors, especially Clint and Brandi. Ask them about their FIRST philosophy, and listen. What they have to say is usually worth listening to. |
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#51
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Re: Why even bother submitting a Chairman's Award if we're not gonna win?
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I had the pleasure of working with them pretty closely when I was still on a team, and they really have a different outlook on FIRST (in a good way). I definitely see them going places in FIRST, and not just because of their robot. Also, if they have their Chairman's video playing, watch it. Like Carolyn said, it's very unique. |
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#52
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Re: Why even bother submitting a Chairman's Award if we're not gonna win?
My favorite moment of MSC2013 was 2337 winning their first State Chairman's Award. This isn't a knock on the others that won or submitted, but I love to see a team make it to that level for the first time.
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#53
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Re: Why even bother submitting a Chairman's Award if we're not gonna win?
My first reaction to this thread was that I've always been frustrated by the fact that, unlike the Gracious Professionalism and Engineering Inspiration awards, the Chairman's Award has to be applied for, even though it is also a recognition award.
Luckily, I had a chance for my thoughts to percolate. Just as FIRST uses robots to inspire students (and everyone involved), I realized that FIRST uses the Chairman's Award to inspire teams. Many teams initially focus on the robot. In time, some (hopefully, most) of those will start wondering about the Chairman's Award. They look at the process, what other teams are doing, etc. And they start to expand beyond robot build season. Maybe they actually make submissions. Most likely, they increase their efforts and continue to get more involved with their community. At some point, I believe that the focus begins to shift away from the Chairman's Award itself, and toward the actual activities of and interactions by the team (and their impact). If it does, then the original question becomes moot. As Simon and others mentioned, reporting on the state of the team is important. Submitting it is up to the team (awkward as it is, FIRST has yet to come up with a practical alternative to self-nomination). If the judges decide that a team is worthy of recognition, so be it. I don't have a feel for the percentage of teams that become disillusioned enough to seriously ask the question. My guess is fairly small - since these teams would need to be expending serious effort to inspire the community, while keeping CA as a significant goal - it just doesn't make sense to me. I will say that it's been my privilege to watch our team go through a significant part of this process over the last number of years - from a team where people were only willing to commit to build season and actual competition, to a team active year round. |
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#54
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As captain and one of the members who submitted chairman's award for three years: I can see how chairman's award benefits First as well as the community.
Some of the things we wouldn't have considered doing if we weren't applying for chairman's award: 1- Making a therapy device to help a toddler sit on his own. It took only took a week to build and he was able to sit up on his own *he has muscular dystrophy* in five weeks of therapy. The original amount of therapy for this type of disability is longer than five years. 2-Pecan Festival- We go to a local agricultural festival and educate people about the local robotics teams and what First is. We also demonstrate that years game and we hand out buttons to the kids. 3-Asking legislative officials to come to robotics events. We sent out emails and snail mail asking senators and representatives to come to local events for robotics. It was arduous and we only had one official respond to an email. 4- harvest hope food drives. 5- off season robot builds, cart improvements, and sponsor out reach. 6- bringing three rivaling high schools together for the greater good. All this and much much more in six years and we haven't won. Though it may be a requirement for us being sponsored by it's also a massive benefit and I wont forget the stress and nervous interviews for three years and finally seeing the light in some of these forum posts on how to improve ourselves. I am graduating this year and it disheartens me to know my team will become smaller after losses, but I know the more passionate members who are staying will improve us and work like i did for three or four years to win this award. For our community and for First we dedicate our free time and work towards a better future. |
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#55
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Team 27 (RUSH), 2337(Enginerds), 503 (FrogForce), 245 (Adambots) 33 (Killer Bees) are some of the great teams, and in my view they are not great because they win CA or some other award, they are great because they do great things...inspiring their own team and others, which is not easy. The conduct workshop, promote FIRST, inspire others. It's not just about video or the essay, it is what they do. Essay and video are the medium they are informing judges and rest of the world.
MI is the tough state, we feel honored to submit our material and see if we have a chance. BTW, for any judges award, you don't compete, you just present your case and supporting materials to judges, these things are subjective. The competition is on the field where everything you do has a some points. Yeah, we will continue to submit our essays and videos and try to do more than what we did in previous year. |
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