Where's the Gracious Professionalism?

[Navid Shafa]

Originally Posted by J-Blondie

It's a bad experience on both sides which is what I'm trying to help people understand.

That's certainly an understatement. I think everyone understands that many factors have lead to this game becoming difficult to both score and adjudicate. Both teams and volunteers have suffered immensely because of it. However it's imperative that FIRST as an organization and a community learn from the plethora of mistakes made in recent history, so as not to repeat them.

Originally Posted by J-Blondie

I also ask that any complaints to specific situations or events remain in the other threads

I wasn't intending to bring up any specific events, but since you brought up SVR, I'm more than happy to discuss it (or any of the other incidents to which I alluded to) with you outside of this thread if you'd prefer it.*

People have every right to be upset and I'm certainly more sympathetic to the kids who were robbed of the experiences they deserved, than the people who took it from them. The students and teams acted with Gracious Professionalism in nearly all the cases I am aware of. I don't know if I can say the same of those responsible for the decisions, whomever they may be.

*Feel free to PM me.

[J-Blondie]

I brought up SVR because it seems to be what everyone is the most angry about. And like I have said a bunch now, winning is great. It matters in a lot of ways as I highlighted in my original post. But winning or losing out doesn't need to turn you into an ugly vengeful person either. I'm going to stop replying at this point because I'm just repeating myself and I seem to be misunderstood about a lot of what I'm trying to say. That or most people just don't want to hear it.

Final words: Just be nice to each other, have compassion and deal with problems that may or may not arise. Mistakes happen, learn from them. Terrible things happen and hurt EVERYONE INVOLVED. Just think before you post and remember what you are representing when you do post.

[David8696]

Originally Posted by J-Blondie

I brought up SVR because it seems to be what everyone is the most angry about. And like I have said a bunch now, winning is great. It matters in a lot of ways as I highlighted in my original post. But winning or losing out doesn't need to turn you into an ugly vengeful person either. I'm going to stop replying at this point because I'm just repeating myself and I seem to be misunderstood about a lot of what I'm trying to say. That or most people just don't want to hear it.

Final words: Just be nice to each other, have compassion and deal with problems that may or may not arise. Mistakes happen, learn from them. Terrible things happen and hurt EVERYONE INVOLVED. Just think before you post and remember what you are representing when you do post.

I just want to note the fact that the issue at SVR wasn't even about winning. It was about a team being forced to sit out their final match of the season due to an unreasonable decision by a referee. And while I agree that winning is not the only reason to participate in FRC, I would make the argument that having the opportunity to play is. The reason we have a robotics competition is for robots to compete. And when a team is unjustly deprived of that opportunity, I consider it an outrage, and I think it would be more graciously professional not to express a certain measure of dissatisfaction in sympathy for a team who was deprived of the opportunity to compete in their last match of the year.

[Anupam Goli]

Originally Posted by Grim Tuesday

. We need to remember what FIRST is really about. It sure isn't about winning.

This quote was sprinkled around throughout my high school robotics team. I thought I heard the last of it when I graduated, but I guess not. I really hate this statement. FIRST's mission might be to inspire, but we're all participating in the FIRST Robotics Competition. Competitions have winners and losers, and to say it's not about winning when FIRST gave us a competition is cheapening the experience and can also be derogatory for those that aim to win.

I get it, FIRST's goal is to inspire, but the competition is one of those vehicles to inspire. Building a winning robot is inspirational; watching a winning robot is inspirational; watching the teams on einstein is inspirational. Sure, we can say that teams that don't make elims at their regionals or district events can still have inspired students, I was one of those students, but I'd argue that students who work towards winning and are on winning teams are more inspired than those who sit out saturday afternoon at their regional or district competitions. Saying that there's only 3 winners at a regional doesn't mean anything. There's 30 teams in Baseball, but only one wins the world series. If it's not about winning, why don't we give every team a blue banner, and an automatic bid to Championships? Because that's not inspiring, and we all know it. No one would want to pay $5000 a year, plus additional event registration, to go to a "fair" where everyone wins everything and your performance on the field doesn't matter.

Everyone has played this game now. GDC has designed games where watching the robots perform was inspirational. GDC has also designed games that made no logical sense (I'm looking at you, Lunacy) and were dull, boring, and hardly inspiring. If FIRST's goal is inspiration, they need to make games that encourage inspiration. Calling out FIRST and the GDC for coming up with a game this hard to officiate and with so many gray areas in the manual isn't un-GP. I think throwing honest criticism and recommendations for improving team's experience is actually very gracious and very professional. As "Robotics Memes" said, we can't sugarcoat the problems of this game and call any criticisms un-GP. Granted, teams and students have had outbursts, but we all try our best to post rationally, and berate those who post while emotionally charged. Yes, there are valid criticisms with this game. Yes, sometimes it gets so bad we start beating a dead horse, but I think everyone just wants to see FIRST acknowledge our opinions and issues with the game and use that as constructive criticism to improve future games.

I never thought I'd have flashbacks to my memories of high school at this age, but reading this thread instantly reminded me of my senior year, when I was arguing to build a kitbot on steroids so we could have a competitive drivetrain, but I was told by the other leaders "FIRST isn't a sport, it's not about winning. It's about being inspired". We don't pay $5000 and put some nuts and bolts together haphazardly just to say "we're inspired". If that was the case, we could save money and enter a Science Olympiad tournament (no offense to SO) or BEST robotics. We pay this money because we want to compete with other robots in the region, we want to foster a culture idolizing STEM, and we want to buy into a system that will guide us towards that goal, and to do that, FIRST gave us a competition, a sport, to play in to win.

[scooty199]

Originally Posted by Anupam Goli

This quote was sprinkled around throughout my high school robotics team. I thought I heard the last of it when I graduated, but I guess not. I really hate this statement. FIRST's mission might be to inspire, but we're all participating in the FIRST Robotics Competition. Competitions have winners and losers, and to say it's not about winning when FIRST gave us a competition is cheapening the experience and can also be derogatory for those that aim to win.

I get it, FIRST's goal is to inspire, but the competition is one of those vehicles to inspire. Building a winning robot is inspirational; watching a winning robot is inspirational; watching the teams on einstein is inspirational. Sure, we can say that teams that don't make elims at their regionals or district events can still have inspired students, I was one of those students, but I'd argue that students who work towards winning and are on winning teams are more inspired than those who sit out saturday afternoon at their regional or district competitions. Saying that there's only 3 winners at a regional doesn't mean anything. There's 30 teams in Baseball, but only one wins the world series. If it's not about winning, why don't we give every team a blue banner, and an automatic bid to Championships? Because that's not inspiring, and we all know it. No one would want to pay $5000 a year, plus additional event registration, to go to a "fair" where everyone wins everything and your performance on the field doesn't matter.

Everyone has played this game now. GDC has designed games where watching the robots perform was inspirational. GDC has also designed games that made no logical sense (I'm looking at you, Lunacy) and were dull, boring, and hardly inspiring. If FIRST's goal is inspiration, they need to make games that encourage inspiration. Calling out FIRST and the GDC for coming up with a game this hard to officiate and with so many gray areas in the manual isn't un-GP. I think throwing honest criticism and recommendations for improving team's experience is actually very gracious and very professional. As "Robotics Memes" said, we can't sugarcoat the problems of this game and call any criticisms un-GP. Granted, teams and students have had outbursts, but we all try our best to post rationally, and berate those who post while emotionally charged. Yes, there are valid criticisms with this game. Yes, sometimes it gets so bad we start beating a dead horse, but I think everyone just wants to see FIRST acknowledge our opinions and issues with the game and use that as constructive criticism to improve future games.

I never thought I'd have flashbacks to my memories of high school at this age, but reading this thread instantly reminded me of my senior year, when I was arguing to build a kitbot on steroids so we could have a competitive drivetrain, but I was told by the other leaders "FIRST isn't a sport, it's not about winning. It's about being inspired". We don't pay $5000 and put some nuts and bolts together haphazardly just to say "we're inspired". If that was the case, we could save money and enter a Science Olympiad tournament (no offense to SO) or BEST robotics. We pay this money because we want to compete with other robots in the region, we want to foster a culture idolizing STEM, and we want to buy into a system that will guide us towards that goal, and to do that, FIRST gave us a competition, a sport, to play in to win.

This matches my sentiments entirely.

I remember hearing my freshman year when I did FTC that FIRST was the "sport for the mind". It certainly has many aspects of a sport. There's practice, there's dedication, it passes my smell test.

This may sound awful to hear, but I'm getting tired of having GP thrown at any sort of criticism or complaint on here. Nothing is exempt from criticism, not FIRST, not the GDC, not Aerial Assist, or any individual or team. In some cases and probably many cases some criticism is justified.

We're also human, you can't expect people in a sport (and I'll continue to call FRC a sport) to not be emotional at some point. That means we have reactions to calls and things we think are wrong. That doesn't excuse actions, but we can't just villify people for feeling strongly about something. That's unnatural.

I'll agree it's Un-GP to say, the "refs suck" or these people are idiots, etc. And while they are volunteers, the honest truth is sometimes refs just might not be that good. Plain and simple.


And now my large point on "it's not about winning" or this "isn't about the robot" or "this isn't about competition".

Yes typically 3 teams win a regional. A small amount of teams of a regional anywhere from 30-60+ teams win. Yes the point is to have fun and on some higher level realize the culture-changing ability of STEM, but at the end of the day this is a COMPETITION. We COMPETE. Teams win, teams lose. I'll be darned if any team I mention in the future or the teams I was on in the past came with this attitude "oh let's just play". NO. We play to have fun, but you best believe we play the game to win.

Winning isn't everything, but let's not act like it doesn't matter. Winning matters, it's just valued differently according to each individual.

As Herm Edwards in the NFL once said, "You play to Win The Game!"

This non-sense of just succumbing to the idea that you don't stand a chance of winning doesn't sit well with me. If you're not trying to do your best in FIRST, you're selling yourself short period.

Gracious professionalism is a great thing, but it's not all of FIRST, neither is winning, and neither is inspiration, and none of them should be used to sugarcoat reality, like the reality of how poorly implemented this game is and how ridiculous some calls and gameplay can be at times.

[Seth Mallory]

Janelle

I wish I could say things as well as you. You are 100% correct.

[BrendanB]

I think its really hard for any of us to weigh in on individual's reactions to some of the events that have happened this season because its easy for us to preach about GP over our keyboards but its another thing to walk it out. For any team to stand through some of the events (SVR, Orlando, San Diego, etc) and react in a positive manner is an extremely hard pill to swallow. Being told you have to sit out of your last chance match to move on all because of a simple mistake in the heat of the moment is hard to justify. Or being told that even though you followed the paths to be reinspected for eliminations that the inspectors didn't give you a thorough enough reinspection means you are DQed instantly from two matches you just won and it ended a season for a team.

These are tough items for teams to swallow. You put all of your heart, effort, and time into the season only for it to end without having a fair shot. I feel especially for the seniors on the teams who lost their last chance to move on to the Championship. I hope your experience in FIRST isn't marked by the events but instead of the victories on and off the field.

While I know the topic of this thread is a good reminder to remain professional in the toughest of situations keep in mind you won't know how you will react to a situation like this until you experience it. Please don't judge those who unfortunately had to go through some extremely sad events. That's not being very compassionate to those who did.

[Seth Mallory]

My team did have this happin to us a few years ago. The first thing the team was told was it had happened and accept it. How the team handled it is the real mark of the team. We as the mentors chose to use it as a learning experience in life and our students gained from it. Yes winning would have been nice but learning to live to high standards is more important.

[KevinG]

Gracious Professionalism is about building up the quality of work, emphasizing the value of others, and respecting individuals and the community. It's about building things up, not tearing them down. But at the same time it's not about platitudes or sugar coating issues. I spent the entire weekend inspecting robots and telling people what they did wrong (hooray robot inspection!), but I then told them how to fix it. Probably one of my best experiences this weekend was working with a rookie team, going over the inspection process with them, and then ensuring that they passed by helping them make the necessary changes.

Giving honest (and IMO deserved) criticism about the way things are done is an essential part of GP, and the game is not free from that. There's a major difference between saying "the refs suck!" and "this game is impossible for people to referee perfectly." This year's game was poorly implemented and people have a right to complain about it. It's impossible to expect people to not be disappointed when the final match of their season is lost because a ref missed a possession (which is what happened to my team). There's no lesson to be learned when something like that happens; everybody already knows life isn't fair.

That said, GP is about how you respond to that adversity. In our case the team came together and talked about how we felt. We agreed on the game, let it go, and then focused on what we did well. There was a lot of improvement to consider between this year and last year, and I believe we'll continue that direction in 2015. IMO that's how GP is supposed to work.

[jaykris284]

Agree completely with Anupam. Competition is what drives innovation, it's what creates the next big thing (nowadays the next big thing is usually tech related). So yes while FIRST's end goal is to inspire students I would have to say that the idea of competing, and winning that competition is quite inspiring. Knowing that all the work you have done over the past 6 weeks has paid off, it truly sets the stage for a future endeavor that might take longer than six weeks.

[Dave McLaughlin]

Originally Posted by J-Blondie

FIRST was NOT established to be a competition based on winning.

Then why does FIRST host competitions every year that establish winners?

[D.Allred]

Originally Posted by J-Blondie

...FIRST was NOT established to be a competition based on winning. It was established to give kid of all ages a way to learn about science and technology and how it could lead them into careers that would pay off for themselves and their greater communities, countries and the world. I have been a part of FRC for 8 years and I have been in FIRST for 11 years. I have seen plenty of teams get upset about losing, or about bad calls over the years, but this year has been overwhelming with the lack of compassion I have seen and the lack of gracious professionalism. I have only worked with two different FRC teams, and the experience was great. I may not have the fame or experiences that other people have who regularly post here, but I have always been someone who needs to say something when I see big problems arise...

Janelle,
I guess I’ve seen more examples of the opposite occurring. We are all passionate about the “sport” of FRC. Even under the stress of change, uncertainty, and miscommunication; the essential principles of Gracious Professionalism have held this season together.

Where is Gracious Professionalism this year? How about this example.

David Allred
Mentor 4451 ROBOTZ Garage

[Lil' Lavery]

"Gracious Professionalism" is an ambiguous term, with no set rubric for what defines "GP" behavior and what doesn't. I can only assume this is purposeful, as it should be. It's not black and white, and is often difficult to apply to many situations. It's an ephemeral guideline to what the culture of FIRST, and hopefully the rest of society, should be.

Barry Bonzack posted the definition of "grace" once in a thread at another time the FRC community was facing adversity.

mercy; clemency; pardon: He was saved by an act of grace from the governor. Synonyms: lenity, leniency, reprieve. Antonyms: harshness.

Likewise, "professional" can be defined as follows.

a person who is expert at his or her work: You can tell by her comments that this editor is a real professional.

Neither term directly correspond to one another, and just the definitions of the two words do not encompass all of what Gracious Professionalism is. But you can begin to glean the intent, and more insight can be gained by listening to Woodie Flowers speak about it. Woodie and FIRST often use terms like "kindness," "respect," "creativity," "integrity," "sensitivity," "mutual gain," "standing on the shoulders of giants," and "high quality" when describing GP. In particular, Woodie's sentiments about avoiding humiliation of others echo particularly strong with me this year.

It may be cliche, but adversity is a test of character. While it's far from the first time in FRC history, this year has had plenty of adversity. And like the times in the past, some have handled the adversity better than others. Many have shown that Gracious Professionalism is indeed ingrained into their character. Others have handled it with less grace and less professionalism, and their actions have not contributed to our mutual gain. I do not blame them, this has been a very stressful year and a lot of people have seen their hopes derailed by events fully outside of their control. It can be difficult to manage.

Yet, I do find it hard to reconcile how some of these attitudes are in line with our mutual gain, mutual respect, or avoiding humiliation of others. Throwing temper tantrums or publicly degrading individuals, whether they be volunteers or professionals, does nothing to help the community. The spite and vitriol exhibited by not only the scorned parties, but others in the community, does not seem healthy to me. Just as I do not blame these individuals for their negative attitudes, they should not lay the blame on others. Often, the same emotionally-charged, high-stress environments that led to their emotional states were often involved in the decisions that they disagree with. None of these decisions were made with malice in mind, and nobody is happy about these scenarios. Empathy is tremendously important here.

Originally Posted by Dave McLaughlin

Then why does FIRST host competitions every year that establish winners?

Is it that inconceivable that the competition is only a portion of what FIRST is about, and a means to the end of the ultimate goal of changing culture? It's an easily understood and exciting event that draws attention and gets participants and observers excited. It's using the sports model to create attention and excitement for STEM programs. It's not the core emphasis of FIRST.

[J-Blondie]

By making this post, I no way intended to "sugar coat" the issues that teams faced this year. It is clear that there were plenty and yes, teams have the right to be upset. But as others in this thread have stated, it's about how you respond to the situation that shows who you really are. Teams have every right to be upset when they lose a chance to play as at SVR, but as I told one of their mentors, it was amazing how their team responded. They accepted the decision made, as heart breaking as it was. I have no issue with teams being upset whatsoever.

What I have an issue with is people just assuming that certain people are to blame in such a situation. I understand the need to place blame with someone when you feel wronged, but I think that the entire situation needs less "blame" and more "solution". I fully expect tensions to be high into championships and into the post-season, it's part of what happens. My post is just a comment on the lack of understanding I have seen this year and a lack of compassion for the volunteers who are largely getting the blame for situations that most of us know nothing about directly.

The advice I have to this community specifically is that, it's fine to ask why, but it is NOT okay to make premature accusations and assumptions about individuals who you don't know and situations you don't know anything about. It's better to question what happened, but wait for an explanation before assuming that someone is not worthy of a Head Ref position or question their intentions or intelligence. This is a good thing to remember into championships as well, especially for those of us not attending. Watching via webcasts or even just being in the audience, you aren't going to know all of the details until they come out.

Once again, I have absolutely no issue with teams being angry, and I get that there is a lot of money at stake with each season for all teams and that there is hours of work put into building the robot, but that time is also spent building a team, and if your team is still standing at the end of everything, that's great, but as a competition, my point is that not everyone is going to win, and honestly I have seen much more grace and compassion out of teams who have suffered the worst of the season than I have from some individuals assessing a situation without all the facts and details. I have personal experience with having hope crushing situations both in and out of FIRST, so I'm not just someone who wants to preach the whole gracious professionalism value without having any understanding of what it means or how it feels to feel terrible with actions resulting in something that crushes everything you have worked for. I REALLY DO GET IT I PROMISE.

[Grim Tuesday]

With respect to my opinion on winning: I think it's a ways to a means. It's an incentive to get people excited, it's a goal. It is how FIRST achieves its mission of inspiring respect in STEM. Everyone should try to win, and the game should make it fun to win - and fun to lose. I think what happened at SVR is crazy. But to think of any season as a failure when you don't win is downright wrong.