Gracious Professionalism Scrapbook

[mackfix]

Hey Teams!
Team 4 Element is creating a Gracious Professionalism scrapbook that will be available for the FIRST community. We will like anyone who wants to take part, to share an inspirational story about your experience with gracious professionalism at a competition, team meetings or other robotics events. If you are interested, please submit your story in this discussion or you can email it to Ricki.Eini@hightechla.org. Please include your team name, number, your name, your role on the team and your story. Please email us a team and/or individual photo to include in the scrapbook. If you have graduated from a FIRST team, Team 4 is still interested to hear about your experience with Gracious Professionalism. Any submissions are welcome and greatly appreciated.

P.S. An electronic copy of the scrapbook will be available to any teams who wish to have a copy. The scrapbook will be available in our pits during competitions. We will keep everyone posted on our project.

Good Luck!
- Team 4 Element

[smurfgirl]

That's a really neat idea. I'm definitely interested in participating, but I have to think of some of my stories first. (: I'll either come back and edit this post, or e-mail you when I think of them.

[Libby K]

What a great idea! I'll be sending you some- I have years and years of stories.

[mackfix]

Anyone's help in completing the scrapbook is greatly appreciated. We have been looking throughout old post on CD and we found some great stories. We will be contacting the writer and asking them if we can use it in our story. Thanks for everyone's help!

[ShotgunNinja]

Hey, I have one:

Last year, at the Milwaukee regional, my team (1652) asked me to go get a handout from the officials desk, which, as I found out, didn't have enough copies for all of the teams who wanted them. So they asked me to go find a team with a copier/printer and make some copies, which I graciously accepted. Several people standing around me were able to point me towards the two pits with copiers, where the pit crew for that team allowed me to make copies and help me distribute them to the pits who had not received one. The thing that struck me was how almost everyone seemed willing to help in every way they could, unconditionally. Even though it was just a simple task, that made it much easier than having to search through the entire pit area (we had about 62 teams at that regional that year) to find the two copiers. So thanks, whichever team let us use their copiers. You are gracious professionals.

[mackfix]

The submissions we are receiving are truly inspiring. Keep them coming!

Thanks from all of us at Team 4!

[SamC]

This is a really neat idea. I can't wait to see the final product in LA this year.

[NorviewsVeteran]

At the 2008 Charlottesville FTC regional, the teams were divided into two divisions, only to face each other in the final matches. Between a couple of matches, a team from the other division, I never got their number, was frantically power walking through the pits, almost yelling, "Does anyone have a 12V DC motor?" Remembering we had taken two DC motors off our robot before our previous match, I instinctively said "YES", and everyone at our table spent maybe 10 seconds finding the motors and gave them to him, he hastily thanked us, and rushed back to his team's pit.
After the matches were over, he came back over to return the motors (we gave him two, because you never know if one is dead) and shook all our hands and said he was going to put us up for the gracious professionalism award, which apparently the FTC does not have, considering it wasn't mentioned at the award ceremonies. At the time, I was a little let down, then realized I didn't care about the lack of trophy or medal.

Also that day, our programmer, the other mechanical leader, and myself helped Team Tiki with their arm, turning a rather pitiful (sorry) 3:1 gear ratio and turning it into a more shoulder-like 9:1 so it could lift itself. (they still owe us $5 from the bet )