Chairman's Award and Woodie Flowers Award Help

[Amanda Morrison]

I'm happy to offer Chairman's Award and Woodie Flowers Award submission assistance for the 2009 season for any FRC student participant who would like someone to help review their work.

Here's what you need to know about me: I have reviewed many winning Chairman's, WFFA, and WFA award essays in the past, and have worked with countless teams over my last eight years in FIRST. I'm administrative by trade, but hold a bachelor's in English and have written many newspaper/journal/magazine articles and essays for publication. I am very good at catching the 'little things' in your essay that you may miss: redundancy, spelling or grammatical errors, inconsistencies, and other basics. You are obviously not committed to using any of my corrections if you do not feel inclined.

All you have to do is send me a Microsoft Word (.doc), OpenOffice (.ods), or Adobe PDF (.pdf) file of your award submission for the 2009 Lunacy season. Send me a private message here on CD, and I'll send along my email address. That's all! I'll send back an edited copy with my suggestions and advice.

Here's what you need to know:

* The confidentiality of your submission will be kept. I will not share any of the entries without your permission, and only after the season is over.
* I will have your submission back to you within 24 hours (if not immediately), or warn you in advance if it will be longer.
* I will edit and re-edit as many revisions of the entry as you would like.
* I will make suggestions, offer advice, and edit basic grammatical errors. You must write the actual content for the submission yourself, although I'm happy to give you assistance on which path you can take (helping to create outlines, for instance, is a good place to start).
* I will give you tips and advice on how to write for FIRST judges, and how to better represent your team.

Search for 'Woodie Flowers help' for some of my past threads offering help as well.

Best wishes to all of you submitting for these awards this season.
Amanda

[Amanda Morrison]

Just a reminder...

If you haven't already gone on FIRSTawards.org to create your team's account for award submissions, do it NOW. If you're attempting to submit right at the deadline and have a problem (even if you think it is a website problem), it is your tough luck for not doing it sooner. Please don't waste your team's hard work - register now!

Chairman's, Woodie Flowers Award, and Hall of Fame entries are due on FIRSTawards.org on Thursday, Feb. 19, 2009 at 11:59 pm. Send me your rough drafts and I'll get them back to you immediately... if you're lucky, well within 4 hours of when you send it. Don't wait until it's too late!

Here's some advice for those of you procrastinators just now starting your Woodie Flowers Award:

1. Identify with your team 3 main things you'd like for the judges to notice. Does your mentor communicate well? Get along with the students? Do something extraordinary that sets them apart? Name about three things that you think their best traits.

2. Ask yourself, why? Take those three focused main ideas and build upon them. Make a web with the ideas if you feel that it will help you decide what to write about, and how to really make them the strong points of the essay.

3. From those three main points, find a story or instance where you think your mentor really displayed that quality. Why did that really affect the students/mentors/team? (Although you may not use the three stories in the essay, this will help you clarify what you'd like to say and how to say it concisely and effectively.)

4. Incorporate what you've come up with into your essay. Many colleges will teach your students the five paragraph method (introduction, three main points of one paragraph each, and a conclusion), and this is by far one of the most effective and persuasive forms of writing or speech. Keep that in mind when you revise this essay.

I've also written a whitepaper with writing tips, found here:
http://www.chiefdelphi.com/media/papers/2154

And here are some past examples of WFA entries:
http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/sh...ad.php?t=54710
http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/sh...ad.php?t=45026
http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/sh...ad.php?t=36669
http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/sh...ad.php?t=28194
http://www.chiefdelphi.com/media/papers/1547
http://www.chiefdelphi.com/media/papers/1536
http://www.chiefdelphi.com/media/papers/1527
http://www.chiefdelphi.com/media/papers/1526
http://www.chiefdelphi.com/media/papers/1430

Good luck, and happy writing!

[Robyn Needel]

Thanks for the advice, suggestions, and offer of help for procrastinators, Amanda, it's very gracious of you - and hopefully, our student writer will take you up on it!

Happy FIRST Season!

Robyn Needel

[RedHeadRobotics]

Thank you so much for posting this! This is our first year writing the award, and we were so lost! We really appreciate it! Best of luck to your team this season!

[Doctor]

How do you send in a submission for the Woodie Flowers award? Is there a word limit?

[Siri]

Good to see someone knew asking about WFA! This is what you're looking for:
http://www.usfirst.org/sites/default...v%20012612.pdf

[Jon Stratis]

Originally Posted by Siri

Good to see someone knew asking about WFA! This is what you're looking for:
http://www.usfirst.org/sites/default...v%20012612.pdf

Note that this is specific for 2012 (although I don't think anything changed in 2013).

For information on submission for next season (or any future year, really), look in the "Awards" section of the Administrative Manual for that year. In 2013, the WFA is outlined in section 6.9, with the entry requirements (including length of entry) in section 6.9.5 and the submission process outlined in section 6.9.7.