Prepping for 2008: Awards, Bandsaws, and Perspective

[Nin_estarSaerah]

Our team, in its third year, has gone to three championships, and has one blue banner on the shop wall, but in all truth is not nearly as wholeheartedly immersed in FIRST as most teams, and as much as i would like. From this, "winning" in the sense of putting a trophy in our little glass case, especially with the recent state championships in our school by the football team, band and chorus, has become a big priority. After all, we need to make our mark too. Hardly anyone has caught on to gracious professionalism or the fact that the biggest goal is not in fact, winning an award, but the reward of our own individual learning and the transformation of our generation to one that values science and mathematics. I'm finding it especially hard to instill in the freshmen a sense of FIRST instead of "battlebots" when the "old members" barely have grasp of it. I agree that we can't let the competition dim because it is a measure of how well we are working at being gracious professionals, how hard our team tries, how well we accomplish the task put before us. competition is the medium we use, because out in the "real world" it is everywhere, if a bit more subtly disguised and without the cheering crowds and painted hair. but when the focus becomes only on something shiny, I think that we have some problems.