Gracious Professionalism?

[fuzzwaz]

Hi, most of you guys probably don’t know me and that’s fine. My time in FIRST can be described as meeting new people and relishing in the experiences that the FIRST program brings to teams around the world. This has led me to meet amazing people who belong to amazing teams. Creating a long lasting relationship not only between teams, but between people. Over time I have come to question why I believe gracious professionalism has been slowly decreasing as the years go by. I like to believe that I am the unluckiest/luckiest member on my team. I have never seen team 503 win a competition since I joined, yet I have loved every second of my experience here. Meeting new teams and new people means listening to new point of views and opinions on certain subjects. What I have come to gather over the years has shocked me in every regard.

Why do some people in FIRST find it ok to accuse certain teams of bending the rules and discouraging creativity because of a team’s success? If there is any rule bending or lack in student build on any team that is wrong in its own right, but accusing teams is, in my opinion, just as bad. Very little people (if not any) truly know whats going on with these teams in the first place and for a person to come up and said “___ doesn’t build this” or “_____ does that” is just immoral. We should be able to trust and respect every team for who they tell us to be and not accuse them of what we may hear or assume.

I remember during build season this year it was the first time I got to see us bag our robot when the six weeks ended. I was confused because it was just in a bag within our build space. I looked over at my head mentor and said,

“So what is stopping a team from just going a day or two longer and then bagging up the robot?”

He just looked at me and answered

“You just have to trust that no one else does those types of things and if they do that’s their choice and there is no reason to fault them for that. FIRST is your experience and you cannot let anyone else hinder what you can achieve.”

And I agree completely. There is something completely respectful and amazing to see FIRST teams who have members go through 4 years of the program without winning a single competition or even a single award. Those are the teams that are looked at by others and respected for what they do. Why can’t we look at everyone in that same way? So if a team that we respected because of their misfortune were to suddenly become very fortunate we would have to question their every move?

All I am saying that in the spirit of FIRST, whether teams choose to do things that we don’t agree with or not, we should not hold it against them. Your FIRST experience should be spent with your team and when you look at others you should give them the respect and value as you would a fellow team member. I am not saying or accusing anyone on these forums of doing so, but I know and I sure hope some of you guys know that stuff like this happens.

Harsh feelings are created between teams just because of a rumor that is spreading or even jealousy. Which even if that said rumor is true, it is still not gracious, nor professional to look at any team differently because of it.