Competition Professionalism

[Beth Sweet]

Henry,

The way that I look at it is that everyone expresses their enthusiasm in different ways. As someone who spent 13 years of my life in a dance studio (both prior to and during my time in FIRST), I learned to express my emotions through physical movement. And that's how I look at dancing at competitions. These kids are excited, they're trying to get it out. For me, by nature, emotions are let out via physical movement.

There is, however, a line, and I'm sure that most of us know where that is. FIRST competitions are obviously not the place for "dirty dancing", and for the most part, I haven't seen them treated as one.

So I guess that my overall thoughts are, dance the night away. One thing that I have learned in business/accounting school, is that business-people enjoy having fun as much as the next person. They may not be the ones standing out there breaking it down with you, but they're the ones laughing along with you.