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Unread 20-10-2003, 17:10
Chris Hibner's Avatar Unsung FIRST Hero
Chris Hibner Chris Hibner is offline
Eschewing Obfuscation Since 1990
AKA: Lars Kamen's Roadie
FRC #0051 (Wings of Fire)
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Quote:
Originally posted by KenWittlief
"at some point in the next six weeks you are going to start feeling like you are involved in a robot building contest. Then you are in serious trouble" -Dean Kamen at last years kickoff meeting.

The competition between teams is only for the purpose of completing the engineering design cycle - it gives teams a chance to see how they have done, compaired to other teams with the same limitations, goals and objectives.

The 'contest' between teams is only the foundation on which we take the students through an engineering design cycle - it makes it more interesting, but its not what FIRST is all about

when you think you are here to compete against other teams, thats when bad things start happening:

-adults yelling at students on the playfield after a bad performance in a match

- students off in a corner at a regional, in tears

- adults getting angry with each other over disagreements about the robot or team

- students making comments to other teams like, "your robot is a pile of junk!"

- adults or students quitting the team in the middle of the season.

Ive seen all these things happen over the last several years.

The competition is a friendly / gentalmens sort of sport - never taken seriously - with the understanding that it is only a forum to put our machines to the test, and see how well we did against what WE set out to do

not to see which team can build the best robot.

If you have to build the best robot to be inspired then we end up with one winning inspired team, and 999 losers.

That is not the spirit of FIRST.
This is starting to get off topic, but anyway...

I knew that what I said would be somewhat controversial. Just before I clicked send, I actually considered removing that whole thing and saying something completely different, but then I realized that I was being completely hypocritical if I did that.

Ken, I realize that some people go off the deep end and become overly competitive and have a "win-at-all costs" mentality, but that is far, far, far, FAR from what I meant. What I meant is that this competition should still be treated as a competition, with good sportsmanship and gracious professionalism ruling everyone's actions.

My point is that there seems to be a trend in FIRST in which people are saying (I'm paraphrasing here), "who cares about the robots, let's inspire the students." What I'm saying is, it's the robots that inspire the students, not someone saying, "hey you, be inspired now."

When students (and people in general) feel driven to be their best, they learn more and are inspired more. I'll give you two students: student A who does barely enough to do the minimum necessary to pass a class, and student B who is driven to have the best grade in the class, and I'll guarantee you that student B will come out of that class with a MUCH better grasp of the subject matter. (Notice here that I didn't imply that student B cheated or was brutal to other students to get the highest grade - I just stated that he is driven to work hard.)

I feel that too many people are advocating that it's okay to do the least possible squeak into the robot competition. I want to stand up and say that I disagree with that. Teams that TRY to win and TRY to do their best end up having students that learn more, learn the value of hard work, and are inspired by the process. Allowing a team to do the bare minimum is a disservice to the students on that team.

Obviously there are teams that probably don't have the resources to win this competition. But that doesn't mean they should give up and say, "oh well, why bother - we're never going to win." They should still say, "hey, if we work hard and do our best, we can be competitive. We don't have to win it all to have success, but if we're competitive, we will have succeeded. And if we are competitive, you never know what might happen." That is what I meant.
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