Why do we think we are better?

[Kims Robot]

Im glad the heat came out of this debate (or at least so it seems at the moment), and some great reminders and thoughts have turned it into a better conversation

Cody, I can see where you (and presumably some of your friends) get this impression. I do think good points were raised by Wendy & Jaine... that FIRSTers are aspiring to be better people in general... not better than everyone else, but better than who they were.

I have a perfect example for this. There is a student on my team who came to us as a young sophomore. Every other sentence out of his mouth was some sort of lie or stretched truth. No one knew if they could trust him, and his reputation was horrible. Because we kept teaching GP to our team, because the mentors pushed him hard to start acting it, and tried their hardest to be models of it, he has grown immensely, and while he isnt 100% improved (none of us EVER will be), he is now much more dependable, trustworthy, and was even selected to be our team leader in his senior year.

FIRST is not about being perfect. Yes some of us may try to tell other FIRSTers to uphold the rules or act more GP... its because we are all struggling to be better than we are now, not better than the rest of the world, just better than the people we were yesterday.