Where's the Gracious Professionalism?

[Anupam Goli]

Originally Posted by Grim Tuesday

. We need to remember what FIRST is really about. It sure isn't about winning.

This quote was sprinkled around throughout my high school robotics team. I thought I heard the last of it when I graduated, but I guess not. I really hate this statement. FIRST's mission might be to inspire, but we're all participating in the FIRST Robotics Competition. Competitions have winners and losers, and to say it's not about winning when FIRST gave us a competition is cheapening the experience and can also be derogatory for those that aim to win.

I get it, FIRST's goal is to inspire, but the competition is one of those vehicles to inspire. Building a winning robot is inspirational; watching a winning robot is inspirational; watching the teams on einstein is inspirational. Sure, we can say that teams that don't make elims at their regionals or district events can still have inspired students, I was one of those students, but I'd argue that students who work towards winning and are on winning teams are more inspired than those who sit out saturday afternoon at their regional or district competitions. Saying that there's only 3 winners at a regional doesn't mean anything. There's 30 teams in Baseball, but only one wins the world series. If it's not about winning, why don't we give every team a blue banner, and an automatic bid to Championships? Because that's not inspiring, and we all know it. No one would want to pay $5000 a year, plus additional event registration, to go to a "fair" where everyone wins everything and your performance on the field doesn't matter.

Everyone has played this game now. GDC has designed games where watching the robots perform was inspirational. GDC has also designed games that made no logical sense (I'm looking at you, Lunacy) and were dull, boring, and hardly inspiring. If FIRST's goal is inspiration, they need to make games that encourage inspiration. Calling out FIRST and the GDC for coming up with a game this hard to officiate and with so many gray areas in the manual isn't un-GP. I think throwing honest criticism and recommendations for improving team's experience is actually very gracious and very professional. As "Robotics Memes" said, we can't sugarcoat the problems of this game and call any criticisms un-GP. Granted, teams and students have had outbursts, but we all try our best to post rationally, and berate those who post while emotionally charged. Yes, there are valid criticisms with this game. Yes, sometimes it gets so bad we start beating a dead horse, but I think everyone just wants to see FIRST acknowledge our opinions and issues with the game and use that as constructive criticism to improve future games.

I never thought I'd have flashbacks to my memories of high school at this age, but reading this thread instantly reminded me of my senior year, when I was arguing to build a kitbot on steroids so we could have a competitive drivetrain, but I was told by the other leaders "FIRST isn't a sport, it's not about winning. It's about being inspired". We don't pay $5000 and put some nuts and bolts together haphazardly just to say "we're inspired". If that was the case, we could save money and enter a Science Olympiad tournament (no offense to SO) or BEST robotics. We pay this money because we want to compete with other robots in the region, we want to foster a culture idolizing STEM, and we want to buy into a system that will guide us towards that goal, and to do that, FIRST gave us a competition, a sport, to play in to win.

[scooty199]

Originally Posted by Anupam Goli

This quote was sprinkled around throughout my high school robotics team. I thought I heard the last of it when I graduated, but I guess not. I really hate this statement. FIRST's mission might be to inspire, but we're all participating in the FIRST Robotics Competition. Competitions have winners and losers, and to say it's not about winning when FIRST gave us a competition is cheapening the experience and can also be derogatory for those that aim to win.

I get it, FIRST's goal is to inspire, but the competition is one of those vehicles to inspire. Building a winning robot is inspirational; watching a winning robot is inspirational; watching the teams on einstein is inspirational. Sure, we can say that teams that don't make elims at their regionals or district events can still have inspired students, I was one of those students, but I'd argue that students who work towards winning and are on winning teams are more inspired than those who sit out saturday afternoon at their regional or district competitions. Saying that there's only 3 winners at a regional doesn't mean anything. There's 30 teams in Baseball, but only one wins the world series. If it's not about winning, why don't we give every team a blue banner, and an automatic bid to Championships? Because that's not inspiring, and we all know it. No one would want to pay $5000 a year, plus additional event registration, to go to a "fair" where everyone wins everything and your performance on the field doesn't matter.

Everyone has played this game now. GDC has designed games where watching the robots perform was inspirational. GDC has also designed games that made no logical sense (I'm looking at you, Lunacy) and were dull, boring, and hardly inspiring. If FIRST's goal is inspiration, they need to make games that encourage inspiration. Calling out FIRST and the GDC for coming up with a game this hard to officiate and with so many gray areas in the manual isn't un-GP. I think throwing honest criticism and recommendations for improving team's experience is actually very gracious and very professional. As "Robotics Memes" said, we can't sugarcoat the problems of this game and call any criticisms un-GP. Granted, teams and students have had outbursts, but we all try our best to post rationally, and berate those who post while emotionally charged. Yes, there are valid criticisms with this game. Yes, sometimes it gets so bad we start beating a dead horse, but I think everyone just wants to see FIRST acknowledge our opinions and issues with the game and use that as constructive criticism to improve future games.

I never thought I'd have flashbacks to my memories of high school at this age, but reading this thread instantly reminded me of my senior year, when I was arguing to build a kitbot on steroids so we could have a competitive drivetrain, but I was told by the other leaders "FIRST isn't a sport, it's not about winning. It's about being inspired". We don't pay $5000 and put some nuts and bolts together haphazardly just to say "we're inspired". If that was the case, we could save money and enter a Science Olympiad tournament (no offense to SO) or BEST robotics. We pay this money because we want to compete with other robots in the region, we want to foster a culture idolizing STEM, and we want to buy into a system that will guide us towards that goal, and to do that, FIRST gave us a competition, a sport, to play in to win.

This matches my sentiments entirely.

I remember hearing my freshman year when I did FTC that FIRST was the "sport for the mind". It certainly has many aspects of a sport. There's practice, there's dedication, it passes my smell test.

This may sound awful to hear, but I'm getting tired of having GP thrown at any sort of criticism or complaint on here. Nothing is exempt from criticism, not FIRST, not the GDC, not Aerial Assist, or any individual or team. In some cases and probably many cases some criticism is justified.

We're also human, you can't expect people in a sport (and I'll continue to call FRC a sport) to not be emotional at some point. That means we have reactions to calls and things we think are wrong. That doesn't excuse actions, but we can't just villify people for feeling strongly about something. That's unnatural.

I'll agree it's Un-GP to say, the "refs suck" or these people are idiots, etc. And while they are volunteers, the honest truth is sometimes refs just might not be that good. Plain and simple.


And now my large point on "it's not about winning" or this "isn't about the robot" or "this isn't about competition".

Yes typically 3 teams win a regional. A small amount of teams of a regional anywhere from 30-60+ teams win. Yes the point is to have fun and on some higher level realize the culture-changing ability of STEM, but at the end of the day this is a COMPETITION. We COMPETE. Teams win, teams lose. I'll be darned if any team I mention in the future or the teams I was on in the past came with this attitude "oh let's just play". NO. We play to have fun, but you best believe we play the game to win.

Winning isn't everything, but let's not act like it doesn't matter. Winning matters, it's just valued differently according to each individual.

As Herm Edwards in the NFL once said, "You play to Win The Game!"

This non-sense of just succumbing to the idea that you don't stand a chance of winning doesn't sit well with me. If you're not trying to do your best in FIRST, you're selling yourself short period.

Gracious professionalism is a great thing, but it's not all of FIRST, neither is winning, and neither is inspiration, and none of them should be used to sugarcoat reality, like the reality of how poorly implemented this game is and how ridiculous some calls and gameplay can be at times.

[Seth Mallory]

Janelle

I wish I could say things as well as you. You are 100% correct.

[BrendanB]

I think its really hard for any of us to weigh in on individual's reactions to some of the events that have happened this season because its easy for us to preach about GP over our keyboards but its another thing to walk it out. For any team to stand through some of the events (SVR, Orlando, San Diego, etc) and react in a positive manner is an extremely hard pill to swallow. Being told you have to sit out of your last chance match to move on all because of a simple mistake in the heat of the moment is hard to justify. Or being told that even though you followed the paths to be reinspected for eliminations that the inspectors didn't give you a thorough enough reinspection means you are DQed instantly from two matches you just won and it ended a season for a team.

These are tough items for teams to swallow. You put all of your heart, effort, and time into the season only for it to end without having a fair shot. I feel especially for the seniors on the teams who lost their last chance to move on to the Championship. I hope your experience in FIRST isn't marked by the events but instead of the victories on and off the field.

While I know the topic of this thread is a good reminder to remain professional in the toughest of situations keep in mind you won't know how you will react to a situation like this until you experience it. Please don't judge those who unfortunately had to go through some extremely sad events. That's not being very compassionate to those who did.

[Seth Mallory]

My team did have this happin to us a few years ago. The first thing the team was told was it had happened and accept it. How the team handled it is the real mark of the team. We as the mentors chose to use it as a learning experience in life and our students gained from it. Yes winning would have been nice but learning to live to high standards is more important.

[KevinG]

Gracious Professionalism is about building up the quality of work, emphasizing the value of others, and respecting individuals and the community. It's about building things up, not tearing them down. But at the same time it's not about platitudes or sugar coating issues. I spent the entire weekend inspecting robots and telling people what they did wrong (hooray robot inspection!), but I then told them how to fix it. Probably one of my best experiences this weekend was working with a rookie team, going over the inspection process with them, and then ensuring that they passed by helping them make the necessary changes.

Giving honest (and IMO deserved) criticism about the way things are done is an essential part of GP, and the game is not free from that. There's a major difference between saying "the refs suck!" and "this game is impossible for people to referee perfectly." This year's game was poorly implemented and people have a right to complain about it. It's impossible to expect people to not be disappointed when the final match of their season is lost because a ref missed a possession (which is what happened to my team). There's no lesson to be learned when something like that happens; everybody already knows life isn't fair.

That said, GP is about how you respond to that adversity. In our case the team came together and talked about how we felt. We agreed on the game, let it go, and then focused on what we did well. There was a lot of improvement to consider between this year and last year, and I believe we'll continue that direction in 2015. IMO that's how GP is supposed to work.

[jaykris284]

Agree completely with Anupam. Competition is what drives innovation, it's what creates the next big thing (nowadays the next big thing is usually tech related). So yes while FIRST's end goal is to inspire students I would have to say that the idea of competing, and winning that competition is quite inspiring. Knowing that all the work you have done over the past 6 weeks has paid off, it truly sets the stage for a future endeavor that might take longer than six weeks.