The Responsibility of Being a Role Model

[AndyB]

I kind of had an urge to write this. You may disagree with parts of it, or more likely, not understand parts of it, but I thought I'd share it. Please excuse any poor grammer.

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Following the Minnesota Regional last year, I thought it would be nice to send out a few congrats. I decided to post a congratulations thread on a team's forum for an award they won. I received a reply saying "Thanks so much! It's an incredible honor to be congratulated by a FIRST celebrity."

I was completely shocked at the comment. Me, a FIRST celebrity? It now occurs to me that the poster most likely mistook me for Andy Baker... which makes a lot more sense. A FIRST celebrity, though, is kind of a concept that is universally recognized but rarely spoken about. Being a celebrity makes you a role model and puts a lot of responsibility on your shoulders.

We may not have any Paris Hiltons around here (though I've heard Paul Copioli is a great kisser), but we do have members who are looked up to as more than just "a mentor from team XXXX".

I was a high schooler when I joined the Chief Delphi forums. You learn who the board regulars are pretty quickly. Eventually, you learn who some of these FIRST celebrities are as well. I remember looking up to certain members as role models and people that I wouldn't mind being like one day. I built a lot of respect for a lot of these people, some of them I had never met or spoken to before (Or still haven't met or spoken to before). This first kind of hit me during my 2007 trip to IRI.

I was running scouting and strategy for my team (269). I remember having a big match to play near the end of the day on Friday. I'm pretty sure we had to play Beatty (71) and Exploding Bacon (1902), who were both Einstein'ers that year. We were with 148. If you'd asked me at the time, our robot was awesome and fully capable of hanging with the best of them if the stars lined up right. If you ask me now, we weren't that great. Average at best.

When meeting with our alliance partners to work out a strategy, this guy from 148 told us that the best strategy was for us to play defense on Beatty and get back in time to deploy our ramps.

I was pissed. I went off on him a little and told him that we were better than he thought we were and that we weren't playing defense. I was insulted by his request and angry that he would relegate us to a job that any bot with wheels could do.

We went back to our pit and the first thing that was said to me was "I can't believe you just did that to JVN." My jaw dropped a little. THAT was JVN? Wait. THE JVN!?. Oh crap. I immediately walked over to 148's pits, found the big guy in the black shirt with the balding head and told him "We'll play defense."

The strategy worked out and we won the match, but that is beside the point. (Other than the one where I learned to always listen to John). My entire opinion changed when I found out who I was talking to. I had heard the name JVN before but had never put the name to the face. If you ask John if he knew me back in 2007, I would assume the answer would be no. But I looked up to him. I couldn't have told you anything about him at the time either. I didn't even know what he looked like. But I knew the name and I knew that he was someone I was suppose to respect. John may not have realized it, but he had someone looking up to him.

The point I'm trying to make is that you may not realize you have this "celebrity" characteristic as well. You may have a lot of friends in the FIRST community but you may not realize how many people look up to you from outside of that group. Or for that matter, look up to you from inside that group.

I used John here because I figured he wouldn't have a problem with it. I think he is decently aware of how many people look up to him and he does an excellent job of presenting himself in a professional manner. Even though I know John a little better now, at least enough to put his name to his face, I still look up to him a lot. I don't mean to make him sound bullying or anything either. It was really just a case of my inflated ego at the time.

You may not realize that as you walk through the pits in the World Congress Center, you have eyes watching you. Those eyes don't stop following you after leaving the competition. You carry your celebrity everywhere there is a FIRSTer. The chat rooms, the forums, the competitions... even your Facebook page. You may not know it, but you are being looked up to. You are a role model.

There have been times in the past when I overheard conversations between some of these people and had my heart sink when I found out the topic being discussed. One discussion I remember vividly was a mentor talking about a party he had been to which involved drinking.

Was it wrong for this person to be at a party? No. He was 21, he can drink if he wants. This person didn't do anything wrong. But to me, this was like listening to Steve Young and Jerry Rice discuss how awesome heroin is. My heart sank to the pit of my stomach. My celebrity was nothing more than a drunk party boy in my eyes. This person could have won a WFA and went on to cure cancer, but I will still put that memory next to it all.

"Drunk party boy" might be a bit harsh, but the thing I want you to take away from this is to always be aware of who could be watching you and listening to you. Being a role-model in this community isn't a choice you really get to make... It just happens. The only choice you get in the matter is whether or not to accept it and take the responsibility to present yourself with an image that others can look up to and aspire to. You may not realize you are a role model at all. To you, you're a screen name that logs on to a forum a couple times a week to answer a question or make a submission for a caption contest. To others though, you are so much more.

Please take your impact on others as a role model into consideration at all times. In the end, this has nothing to do with FIRST, it's more of a life thing.