An apology from someone a little foolish, a little selfish, and a little inconsiderat

[Ken Leung]

As I drag my exhausted body after the dinner with Team 968 RAWC, Sanddrag, Billfred, and Alvin Cheng from team 581 to give Billfred a ride back to the Laitinen's, I asked Billfred, "What did you think of Cal Games? How did I do?"

After establishing the fact that it was an incredible event, that I did do a great job organizing it, Billfred said to me, "It was a little long, and the incoherent speech…" I looked at him in the eye, and I said, "Yeah." We continue down the highway silently for five minutes before we started chatting about something else.

It's only natural to have doubts when you are doing something this big, something this important. In my case, those self-doubts hit me extra hard when I finally dropped Billfred off, and realized I couldn't take another step anymore without having trouble breathing.

I woke up at 3am that night when I couldn't get over the fact that my speech was less than successful. I couldn't stop thinking how tired everyone looked and how stupid I was for insisting on giving it, when I knew we had to start clean up and get everyone out of there.

Looking back, I know the WRRF community will embrace and forgive me for a little thing like this because we've been through so much together, but I was my own worst critic, and it wasn't acceptable that I was a little foolish, a little selfish, a little inconsiderate, a little stubborn, a little idealistic, and a little naïve.

I wasn't about to forgive myself when I clearly knew what the right thing to do was, and I didn't do it.

So, here is my apology to those who were at Cal Games until the very end and refused to leave until everything is cleaned up and taken cared of. Thank you for putting up with me for the past 6 months.


However, I still believe in the speech I spent 6 months working on, and I still believe we don't spend enough time sitting down and taking a moment to think about the bigger picture, about why we are doing what we are doing. So, I am sending this speech to everyone and every team I know through e-mail and Chiefdelphi.com, and ask you pass it on to your students because they are the audience of this speech. I hope you and your student will spend about 15 minutes reading it, and take a moment to think why you are in this wonderful program call FIRST.

They say some words are better left unsaid, so here are 1,536 of them from me, Ken Leung, 06' Cal Games Manager, just another student struggling to grow up in this world.

To Dream the Impossible Dream, by Ken K. H. Leung

This is Ken Leung, signing off.