Gracious Professionalism and Team 60

FIRST General Forum
21

Guys,
I can understand the frustration some teams have when they think they cannot compete with big corporate machines. (Here comes the “but”) BUT I have seen many rookie teams come up with great ideas, I have seen “all student” teams persevere and build a great robot on little or no budget. I have even seen them get into the finals matches and luckily they sometimes picked us for their alliance. If you fit into one of these categories it does not insure that you are going to do poorly anymore than it insures a corporate built giant is going to win. Although I speak only for myself, I put as much as I can into the robot not for us to do well but because I want the students to learn why we do the things we do. And I don’t expect just the students of Wildstang to learn from our robot, I want ALL of you to learn from our robot. If you come to our pit and ask questions you will get answers. Hopefully answers will come from our student pit crew but don’t be afraid to ask me questions or any of the other adults. And it doesn’t need to be about robot specifics, ask me anything. If we do well at competitions it helps the program but it doesn’t teach much. In my mind the competition is the fun, the light at the end of the tunnel, the reward for all the hard work and learning that has taken place over the past two months. The best thing to learn here is this…
Never let yourself or someone else make an excuse for you not to learn. You are never so old or young, rich or poor, tired or busy, winning or losing to learn. I do not consider my day over if I have not learned at least one new thing.
If I have one regret for this competition called FIRST is that there are thousands of students out there who don’t have any idea of what we do or what we can accomplish and cannot take advantage of the incredible learning experience all of you have at your fingertips.
Ok, I’ll put my soapbox away for another day.
Hope to see some of you next week at Great Lakes.
Good Luck All!
P.S. Here’s a saying from my college days.

“Life is not a spectator sport.”

22

As the Teacher/Sponsor for team 60 I am excited about all the banter going on regarding gracious professionalism and our team. I teach P.E. - not engineering. Yet, despite my lack of knowledge in both science and technology, I was inspired by all that FIRST had to offer all students - no matter what their talents or interests.

Our team works 12 months per year raising funds, designing team logos, speaking to service groups and school children throughout the area, and examining issues about what it truly means to function as a TEAM. Each student spends a tremendous amount of time working on projects that may, or may not, directly link them to the robot that goes into competition. My goal is for each of them to come away knowing a little bit more about how they can benefit the world in their own unique way,(whether it be art, public speaking, leadership, computers, etc.,)and how working together makes this a better, more productive world for all of us.

Most of our students do get to work directly on the robot, and all the students enrolled in our robotics class helped brainstorm and design our machine. All traveling team members are required to learn about the basic components of the robot, and they generally do that through hands-on experience working side-by-side with the people at Laron Engineering. Each year I work with the team I increase my own knowledge of science and technology, and I am amazed and inspired each and every day not by our team’s potential for winning, but by the students themselves who have the desire, drive and determination to make everyone a winner - no matter what their gifs may be.

I hope everyone can remember that FIRST IS all about winning… but not with robots. It’s about each and every individual coming away a better person for having had the experience. I know I am a better person for doing so!

23

*Originally posted by gottaluvtheweez *
**In your response to the opinion that Team 60 is the pinnacle of gracious professionalism, I have a very different picture to paint of Team 60 and their so called gracious professionalism.

The FIRST organization is about learning by doing, its about gaining knowledge through experience. Its not sitting back and watching, its standing up and participating. When approaching Team 60’s bench at the Chatsworth Regional they spoke of how great their robot was (it is great, no doubt) and how the students designed it and built it from scratch, and how their only problem was getting the coefficent of frequency to work to their advantage in respects to their wheels…

Did you catch that?

Coefficent of frequency? Now, I’m not a physics expert(I failed the physics AP test), but frequency doesn’t have coefficenets…They meant friction…I gave them a moment to see if they caught their error…they didnt. This got me to think…then a young girl on the team looked at me smiling and said…“I buffered it…and i made it all shiny” To my knowledge we don’t gain inspiration of science and technology by wiping down pieces of metal.

Upon further investigation…the Team 60 tangle only gets worse. If you visited their website pre-chatsworth, you would have read that students were only allowed to watch Glenn and George from Laron Engineering work on the robot in 2 hour shifts on the weekdays and 3 hour shifts on the weekends…

Weren’t they supposed to build their own robot? Huh?? Am I the only person to realize that team 60’s robot is nothing but a corporate creation rather than a student one?

I have nothing against Team 60…the team members are all quite nice…but please…if this is to continue other teams will join the mess and this will be the battle of the conglomerates rather than the battle of minds, hearts, technology.

Some dude who looks at things. **

Howard right?

I apologize that perhaps I was not the best first impression for team 60. I believe the defense of my team was taken care of but as for myself being the girl who “buffered” the arms, I’d like to respond.

I was under the impression that after a fellow team mate went into great detail about the mechanics of our robot you understood and accepted the way our team, as many teams, functions(much like the way I believe FIRST intended teams to run as explained in other postings :slight_smile: ) I wish for you to understand, however, I don’t believe there’s much more anyone can say. As I had mentioned right after meeting you I am a student who before this club knew absolutly nothing about engineerig and had never taken a physics class in my life. So to take a few poorly spoken phrases from somone who informed you of this, add a bit of a twist and call our team ungracious or unprofessional isn’t exactly fair, nor is it accurate.

I guess I just want to remind you (it is Howard isn’t it?) that there’s more to building a robot then just the straight out mechanics. I do not know of any buissness or corporation that functions with an entire work crew of people who all have talents in one specific area. Machine shops are not just run by machinist, nor is a laboratory run simply by scientist. Although I did not put as many hours in building I did do my share of “standing up and participating,” in things like fundrasing and public presentations.

Maybe this is your first year, or maybe it isn’t, but I hope that you will eventually realize what FIRST is about; and it is about inspiring students, and it is about science, and it is also about learning and that, if nothing else, is what members of team 60 are doing.

p.s. I really don’t recall saying “buffered” :slight_smile:

24

Amanda,

there are probably alot of members of teams that do little work, but that doesn’t mean that is what all of them are like. I can tell you this from experience. Last year, as a freshman, i reall did no significant work but other students did most of the work. This year, i am much more a part of the robot and have a betterfeeling for how it works. This year, I have become the Human Play and completely understand how our pneumatics and drive work as opposed to last year, when i did not even knowwhat a hex wrench was.

So, FIRST is a building oppurtunity that most studentswill take advantage of(although there will be a few who don’t).

25

Thank you everyone. I know there were some miss understandings in the beggining , but hopefully everyone can learn, even us. We need to remember that it is the point of us having fun and learning about science that really matters, not just winning. so stay cool and have fun. see you guys at competitions.:cool:

26

ok this forum has changed my view of team 60 as a whole. i was involved in the competition when this girl apairently said “buffered”. Anyway, later in the competition my team (by team 60) was pinned for 38 seconds approx. When we confronted the judges they did nothing so we decided to talk to team 60 about it. I admit now that it was not to good of an idea to do that. When we walked to the players station the people that first started talking were the adults. If the kids had talked it might have been a better outcome. The reason i was bitter toward them was that the mentor denied doing it then he said “Oh i wasnt looking at the clock” and “maybe you should beef up your robot so it can get out of those situations” If he would have come straight forward and said sorry or at least said that he did something wrong then i would have been fine. So to the student members of team 60: My team does not hate you, if at the la regional you need help you can always come to the 691 booth because thats what gracious professionalism is about.oh yeah BTW the guy who looks at things isnt Howard just to let you know.

27

I’m also on 691 and I really hope that you didn’t think our team was mean to you but if we came off as more “edgy” than other teams there is a reason. No, it wasn’t just the sleep deprivation and caffeine lows like all the other teams working into the wee hours of the morning.

The ASB advisor at our school (a very dear mentor to me since I had him for 4 years) and a great teacher and supporter of our team passed away from a heart attack the night before Chatsworth, and many of us did not find out until that morning at the competition. :frowning:

I really doubt that it was our team that was giving you a hard time but just incase, that’s probably the reason. I hope there are no hard feelings…and as cody said, feel free to stop by our pit area in LA.

28

thats rough…i very tragic turn of events indeed

as for 60… there in league all there own on many levels

i will remind people of a Lil off topic thing tho…

team 60 is no the only team to be harrast…

tho i don’t see how nay FIRST member would find it necessary or even reasonable to bug or even insult other teams is beyond me… over here at 702 Ville “The bagel bytes” we been commented on and even to the point of insult on our whole bagel slogan idea which i find annoying and cute lol but yet other teams don’t seem to think so i remember back in 2001 in the SO cal regional i stood around as our team handed out Hundreds of FREE bagels to everyone who wanted on… naturally everyone wanted one since it was day one and everyone was hungry…

it anger me cuz as i stood there i could only hear dumb and uncalled for remarks on how stupid the idea of handing out bagels was… and to had insult to ridicule then they ask wheres the cream cheese? lol i didn’t like it then at the 2002 nationals i didn’t like some of the tones many team gave us for various reason i really dont know why but something was up and you shouldnt be giving any them any kinda of tone of voice that they wouldnt like… so i sympathize with 60 cuz they made a great over performance bot but they got many people against them for it… no one like having enemies for doing things that arent suppose to get people angry

so the final remark is people be nice to everyone… thats all i have to say

KARMA IS REAL SO BEWARE

-Oscar-:wink:

29

I agree that everyone needs to remember their manners during the competition. There was one team in Seattle last year (sorry, I don’t remember who you are!) that I accidentally damaged when I pushed a goal into them at a fairly high speed. Not one second passed after the match ended before I was over on the other side of the field apologizing and offering to help with the repairs. This is the kind of attitude FIRST is based on, and we all need to keep that in mind.

That being said… this thread is dead. Don’t dig it out of the grave :rolleyes:

30

… Why would you bring this up after it’s been dead for 9 months? :confused:

  • Katie
31

i totally respect 60 and what they have accomplished.

i know last year i made a fool out of myself and put them down, i was wrong and i accept that.

Bad

32

With all the revived talk of 60 I must say that this years team look way different then others in the past students are spending at least 20 hours a week with the robot to travel and are gaining vast knowledge of either proggraming electroniucs or machinging. As a former 60 driver I really appreciate all the feed back and wish you all the best of luck this year, and look out because only heaven knows what glenn and george have up their sleaves with 60’s machine next year

33

I can’t wait to see 60’s design this year! You guys are going to the SCRRF preseason competetion in Chatsworth this year right?

34

Have Bells, Will be there!
(see “Hints for Ken L”)
See Ya!
Geo.

35

Haha 60 you guys said your a king of the hill bot?

Defence, extend, of lock in place?

60 60 60 60 60 60 60 60:D

702 702 702 702 702 702:D

Hey it could happen
lol

-Oscar-