One of the best choices I made in high school was joining the Robotics team. The organization that does all the Robotics competitions is called FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology). FIRST advocates for STEM education and shows students the values of it through Robotics. There are multiple levels of Robotics in FIRST: JFLL, FLL, FTC, and FRC. JFLL and FLL stand for FIRST Lego League (JFLL being junior). JFLL is building lego robotics for elementary school kids aged 6-10, and FLL for ages 9-14. FTC stands for FIRST Tech Challenge and it consists of building smaller robots (a few pounds in weight) for grades 7-12. The final one, FRC, stands for FIRST Robotics Competition and it is for grades 9-12. FRC entails building much larger robots (typically 120 lbs in weight) that are supposed to complete certain goals in working with other teams. FRC is what I participated in and upon joining, I realized it isn’t all engineering and that there’s a whole business side to it.
My junior year (my first year on the team), I was just a general member on the Programming Sub-team. I didn’t do much and often felt useless. Come competition season that year, the Presidents recognized my ability to easily talk to others and they asked me to be the Reverse Scout for the team for the remaining competitions. This was a position on other teams, but had not been implemented into our own team yet. The purpose of a Reverse Scout is to essentially talk to the other teams at the competition as so to promote your own team and build connections. Looking back on the team that year, we did not reflect the RLM very well. We were very technical and not entirely inclusive. Many of the members of the team often felt unneeded and like dead weight (myself included before competitions). If I briefly go through each of the components, we would fail to do well in a few. We did not have a very good process of doing things and putting our plans into action/achieving our goals. We often got sidetracked and out of focus. We weren’t very inclusive, as I have described already. Empowerment is intertwined with inclusiveness I feel and in general, we failed to empower our members. Come competition season this changed marginally, but overall it was the same few people doing everything and taking control. Ethically, we did much better I feel. It is difficult to be unethical (in the context of the RLM) and in what the team did, they followed this component fairly well. Coming to the final component of purpose, I feel as though we weren’t quite sure what our purpose was that year. Our only real goal as a team was, “Hey, let’s make a good robot and do good in competition.” Which as a broad goal isn’t bad at all. But we had no real goals set or values established and I feel as though because of this, we weren’t as much as a team as we should have been. I loved the team and the leaders and I see them as family, but the team itself was not the best. Come my senior year, I became the Business President (BP) of the team. As BP, I strived to make the team the best it could be. We had a clearer process for doing everything and established different ways to get ourselves back on track when we got distracted. Due to my experiences in my first year and feedback from the other members of the team, I was determined to work with Hayden (the Engineering President) in including everyone and making sure no one felt left out. Throughout the year, I feel as though we did this very well. Now, with a team of 60-70 people, there are bound to be difficulties in doing so. Hayden and I were unable to give everyone on the team something to do, but we tried as best as we could and did (in my opinion) much better than the previous year. Hayden and I were sure to distribute our power as best as we could, and emphasize the importance of empowering the new members. Our captains and ourselves acted more of overseers and managers, as opposed to doing all of the work (which is how it should be). Through teaching the members what to do, we helped them to learn many different things and be more empowering than my first year. We ran into more ethical problems that year than my first year, and had to overcome those. Certain members being unsafe, certain mentors being controlling and pushy, and Hayden and I both struggling with communication throughout the year. Although there were more problems in this area, we dealt with them very well. Having constructive conversations helped us to find solutions and grow as leaders, and as a team. As for purpose, I feel as though we did this significantly better than the team my first year. After a problem arose early in the year, we got someone in the school who specialized in team goals and values. All of the captains on the team and Hayden and I, met with him and discussed different values and goals we wanted to set for the team. Throughout the meeting we started to come together as a team of leaders and decide on common values and goals. We came up with an acronym for our values, a mission statement, and numerous goals. The next team meeting was dedicated to spreading these values and goals to the rest of the team and over time, we saw them begin to embody these. Between my first and second year on the team, we grew to more accurately reflect the RLM and embody it. In developing my service action proposal, I will use my experiences on the team to build connections. Seeing that my time on the team/a member of FIRST are directly related to what I may want to do for my service action proposal, I can better plan out what I want to do and more easily get the right people to do so.