On our robotics team we believe in three main values that we believe embodyGracious Professionalism: community, learning, and respecting the journey.
Community:
When we were a rookie team two years ago, we were touched by the sincerity and respect given to us by veteran teams. As an ode to these teams, we made a promise to ourselves to give back to the community during every chance we get. This involves going to kickoffs and presenting what we’ve learned from previous seasons, exhibiting at Maker Faire, presenting our FTC robot at FLL competitions, and visiting schools with robotics teams to help with any problems they may have.
Learning:
Three years ago when we started, we made a commitment to learn. To this day, we value and uphold this commitment and it has taken us places we would have never thought of, such as: jewelry factories, hospitals, and universities. We like to believe that this makes us stronger as a team and lets us look at the competition in ways we otherwise would have never thought of.
Respecting the Journey:
If their is one thing we can take away from FIRST, it is that you will fail many times before you succeed. FIRST has given us the opportunity to look at mistakes and not leave them as failed ideas. We use our mistakes as inspiration for ideas that work. In Ring it Up we went through around 30 prototypes of our gripper and we incorporated each failure in our thought process for designing our final version.