Loss of Gracious Professionalism Among First Teams

[Koko Ed]

Originally posted by Redhead Jokes
There's a quote in the Talmud that when you save yourself it's as tho you've saved an entire world.

We "save" FIRST one world at a time, one team at a time, one forum message at a time, one forum at a time, one regional at a time...

You ever notice most of the horror stories are about "adults" on the teams? Every team seems to have one at one time or another and it's basically needs to weed those misguided individuals.

[ChrisH]

Originally posted by MasterZeus
Here is another example of the loss of gracious professionalism: One of the members on my team was an inspector at Cleveland. One of the robots he inspected used a hallowed out battery for the weigh-in so that it was under 130 lbs. I can't believe a team would do that. What kind of an example is this for the students?

That is why when I was inspecting, a team had to either turn the robot on with the battery used for weigh in, or remove the battery and weigh it separately.

Doing such a thing is a very poor example. Hopefully we can arrainge consequences that hurt now but drive the lesson home so the students don't get hurt much worse later. I doubt there's much that can be done for the mentors though.

[Redhead Jokes]

Originally posted by Koko Ed
You ever notice most of the horror stories are about "adults" on the teams? Every team seems to have one at one time or another and it's basically needs to weed those misguided individuals.

lol, not necessarily.

I know on our team there were people others thought were wonderful and turned out to be difficult. There were people others thought were way too difficult, and turned out to be wonderful. There were people who carried grudges and disappeared for months and are back again. We've generally worked things out and have had our best year ever.

[Team238-aholic]

wanna hear about gracious professionalism, well i guess its kinda like that....lol....

well my teams advisor has no faith in anyone on the team...she basically has no faith in the team...

last weekend at BAE regional...she told the team on thursday, "who cares if you don't cheer, the robot is bad anyway..."
-first off....WHO CARES HOW BAD THE ROBOT IS, CHEER...HAVE A GOOD TIME....whatever....its about having fun....
-second off....the robot wasn't that bad...

so after that all the kids thought we sucked and could of cared less about being there....

but it gets better....she picked the drivers due to the amount of work their parents put in helping the team....
-ummmmm....THE DRIVERS ARE AWFUL
-you don't pick drivers that way...
-she only picked like her favorite students too....who are also awful

these kids are going to houston and they all hate each other due to the advisor....my bro trys to tell her stuff (cause hes the pres) and she could care less about anything he says....so hes like had enough, half the team has quit....its horrible....

[IMDWalrus]

Originally posted by MasterZeus
Here is another example of the loss of gracious professionalism: One of the members on my team was an inspector at Cleveland. One of the robots he inspected used a hallowed out battery for the weigh-in so that it was under 130 lbs. I can't believe a team would do that. What kind of an example is this for the students?

You have to wonder: did the students know about the hollow battery? If my team does something like that and I find out, I'd have to turn us in. Everyone would hate me for it, but I couldn't let it happen. In any case, that's just a terrible thing to do and it seems like it's completely contradictory to the spirit of F.I.R.S.T.

[Redhead Jokes]

Originally posted by Paul W.
You have to wonder: did the students know about the hollow battery? If my team does something like that and I find out, I'd have to turn us in. Everyone would hate me for it, but I couldn't let it happen. In any case, that's just a terrible thing to do and it seems like it's completely contradictory to the spirit of F.I.R.S.T.

I want to hear how the students reacted when the inspector caught it.

Reminds me of a favorite quote of mine.
Time heals all wounds.
Time wounds all heels.

Even if a team gets away with doing something unethical, eventually it'll catch up to them.

[Melissa Nute]

Originally posted by Team238-aholic
last weekend at BAE regional...she told the team on thursday, "who cares if you don't cheer, the robot is bad anyway..."
-first off....WHO CARES HOW BAD THE ROBOT IS, CHEER...HAVE A GOOD TIME....whatever....its about having fun....
-second off....the robot wasn't that bad..

That is awful that your mentors dont care about spirit. The team I was with didn't have it any at least on Friday. One of the matches I sat with their team and when they were called, I screamed with my spirit thing. 4 members of the team looked at me with this stare like "what are you doing, our robot sucks, there is no reason to scream" One kid moved b/c he didn't want to hear it.
The team killed MOE in one of the rounds, One kid joined in with me yelling...

I know how you feel though. Teams need spirit no matter what. It shouldn't just be whether or not your team is winning or not, but more so juts part of the comp. as a whole

[Joe Matt]

Spirit is based on the administration of the team. If they see coaches and team heads doing it, then they will have some.

[Team238-aholic]

no i totally agree...because i was there along with 2 other alumni....and we had more spirit than the team combined....like at one point we were winning a match like 80 to 10...and they all just stood there...while we screamed our heads off...they just looked at us like we were idiots...

[Ian W.]

There has been a definite loss of Gracious Professionalism among the FIRST teams.

Ever since I began FIRST (granted, not long ago, Sept. of 2001), it's never been about the robot. The robot has no meaning in FIRST, save for the fact that it's the medium in which SCIENCE and TECHNOLOGY, the important things, are conveyed. Sure, you could do it tons of other ways, but having a robotics competition makes it exciting, and therefore makes people who would not normally do something with science join. What does this mean? Simply, if your robot doesn't work, it doesn't matter, because the robot is really meaningless, in the long run.

What is the important thing, the reason we're all in FIRST then? To better our understanding of Science and Technology, and hopefully make the world a better place. Yes, it's a very lofty goal. Even more so than my team's robot design this year. Guess what though, that's the reason we're in FIRST, all trying to get the Chairman's Award every year. The Chairman's Award, not winning a regional or Championships, is what is important. If this idea is lost, then FIRST becomes nothing more than Battle Bots. A cool thing to do, but no real values are learned from it. I know I don't want that to happen, nor do many of you who are reading this. I love participating in FIRST, but I don't do it so I can win. I do it because I love programming, I love designing the control system, and hell, I love driving the robot. To be honest, this is what I'd love to do for a living. I would never have found that out if not for FIRST. Now, tell me what's more important. Having a working robot, or picking a lifetime career? I think that answer is very simple to get.

I honestly don't care about making a robot that works. Yes, I love it when it does work, and I cringe when it gets destroyed by bins or other robots in a match. I try to fix it if I can, but if it doesn't work, oh well, I'll bring it back out on the field and do what I can with what's working. If I can alter the score in my alliance's favor by just one point, I've succeeded. Last weekend at Annapolis, my team had major problems with our design, due to a lack of time during the six weeks. We were competing with a minimal system, basically a drive train, that weighed in at about 100 lbs. Nothing else worked. By Sat. afternoon, 5 minutes before we shipped our robot, we had everything working. It was not without a price though.

The team referred to in Melissa's post is my team, Team 810, The Mechanical Bulls, of Smithtown, NY. I am truly sorry for anything my team has done to you. I know that I personally appreciated you being there, as you did help with the Human Player position, as can be seen by several students that did an amazing job as Human Player, and would have not if not for your help. You also were able to help out here and there with the robot, definitely doing much more than several members of the team, who, sadly, knew next to nothing about the robot. Once again, I appreciate you for being there to try to help them learn more about their own robot, even if they choose to ignore you and still are in the dark as to how Minotaur functions.

soezgg, I'm sorry you were turned down by my team. I don't know what you look like, so I don't remember seeing you, but I do know that if you had asked and I was in the pit, I would have accepted your help. As it is, I don't know why you were turned down, as we definitely needed as much help as we could get. Once again, I'm sorry at my team's treatment toward you're offer of help.

To the rest of the members of this Bulletin Board:
If you have ever been disrespected by my team, or in any other way appalled by us, I apologize. If you are ever disrespected by my team in the future, please come to the pits and ask for me, and I will apologize in person. I don't think I can ever apologize enough for the actions of my team, but I will try as hard as I can do to so. I know that many things that were done weren't done by me, but as said before, FIRST is composed of TEAMS, not MEs.

Once again, I apologize for this, but I cannot control the actions of my team. I can try to, but it ends up just making the screaming worse. I'll be the first to say that yes, we were fighting, screaming, yelling, etc at each other. I know that gets nothing done. I've been able to trace tension to two people, who I don't feel at liberty to reveal. They know who they are, and if they choose to reveal themselves, all the power to them. If not, well, I believe the problem will continue. If that becomes the case, I would sadly say, I can't wait to graduate and go to another team, besides 810. I wish I didn't have to say that, especially on Chief Delphi of all places, but I guess that this is the place to tell, if anything else.

I know this turned into a rather long rant about my own team, and well, it's a sad day when something like this happens. If you have any more questions, I feel it would be better to contact me though a PM, email, or through AIM. If you wish to continue discussion here too, that's fine with me, I just don't want this turning into a flame fest on my team, ok?

[Joe Matt]

In all fairness people, I think we are over reacting here. Some people get stressed out here and then we go off. I think GP is fine and safe.

And not cheering isn't a sign of lessening GP.

[Gabriel]

I've only been involved with FIRST for three years but I don't think there's been a loss of gracious professionalism. There's a lot of pressure and sometimes people don't handle it well, but given the circumstances, every team I met was kind, friendly and helpful. "Gracious Professionalism" is so common that we assume that every team will behave brilliantly and we only really notice when they don't. (Last year a couple of guys from another team just walked into our pit and started using our drill press because they assumed, correctly, that everyone would go out of their way to help another team) The only time at UTC-New England (2003) that I encountered
"un-FIRST-like" behavior was when we were paired with another high-seeded team against a weaker alliance. The mentor of that team decided to announce to the drive teams that this would be a "crapshoot" and that we had nothing to lose, privately, I told him that this could be a dangerous attitude, and he responded by telling me to "let the professionals handle this." He seemed like a nice guy under a lot of pressure so I didn't take it personally. Sometimes some of the mentors need to be reminded that its only a game, but in general I think "gracious professionalism" is alive and well.

[Jason Morrella]

Gabriel,

Very well put. I think you have summed things up very well.

JM

[Amanda Morrison]

No team is perfect, nor will they ever be. Every team has its struggles, whether those are internal or brought out into the open.

Although I will agree that gracious professionalism seems to be heading on the downward spiral, I urge you to rethink your opinions. How many teams are dedicated to helping rookies, or creating forums for public awareness and communication, or lend a hand to a team in need?

For every team in FIRST that seems to have lost their grip on what this whole competition is about, there are one hundred more teams who come to FIRST not to win, but to learn and succeed.

Who says that we should rant about teams that are losing hold of the FIRST ideals? I've got a better idea- let's help them to remember what FIRST is all about - helping create our students' futures.

[Pin Man]

I agree 100% that there is a loss of gracious professionalism. It saddens me. I hope there is enough gracious professionalism to change this around. I mean not only at the competitions but even on threads in these forums people fight all the time. I know I have only been on a team for 2 years but I have been involved and seen gracious professionalism in FIRST since 1996.