Morris Academy Mentors - Bronx Collaborative: March 2006

Morris Robotics Wins the FIRST Robotics New York City Regional 2006!

I'm just the messenger here, but today was a spectular win by Morris Robotics that I was honored to attend. I wanted to share with you, and anyone you wished to share with, some of the moments captured by my camera today.

For the second year in a row the Morris team won the NYC FIRST Robotics Competition by defeating the Stuyvesant team and their alliance partners. Over the past two years, Morris Robotics has won four straight regional competitions (two at Pittsburgh and two at NYC). Morris also received the 2006 Judges' Award which is given to a team whose unique efforts, performance, or dynamics merit recognition.

One of the most impressive scenes for me, aside from the technical feats achieved with their win, was the sportsmanship of the entire event. I saw Morris Robotics stand out from right from the awards tables to be the first ones to congratulate the other teams involved. It was a decidedly humanizing moment for me, oddly enough happening at a robotics competition. Who knew?

Congratulations to everyone involved, and I wanted to offer a special shout-out to Jon and Columbus, who were on the floor and in the driver's seat during the entire day.

Photo album of the entire day:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/howardyeh/sets/72057594090614942/

Video of the winning moments during the finals (not the best quality, but certainly the spirit was there):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XChSJwm65mE

Video of the intermission period (you'll get a sense of the magnitude of the event by viewing this video):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wgCt3RZSx-8

Bowling Event on 3/4

I was unfortunately away the weekend of the bowling event held on March 4, 2006. Fortunately, I was forwarded pictures of the event from our devoted mentor Mark Kiang. Here's a sampling of what I missed:

Recap of 3/18 Mentoring Event

The theme of today's session with Morris Academy was on etiquette and manners. This is a seemingly mundane topic, but mastery is generally the product of knowing one's environment. Greg and I led a session on etiquette and manners in a professional setting. Greg works at major ad agency on the creative side, while I work in the finance field. Call it Madison Avenue meets Wall Street. While both of us work in an office setting, it is clear that the presentation of oneself would differ between the two. The one point we wanted to get through to the students was to "know your audience". In getting a job, the goal for the applicant is to give him/herself every opportunity to get noticed. Reiterate that an interview is your opportunity to sell yourself.

The primary steps that we discussed in each session were:
1. Punctuality (you're early, you're on-time. You're on-time, you're late. You're late, see ya later)
2. Presentation (dress, greeting, language, confidence)
3. Follow-up (thank you notes and follow-up in general keeps you top-of-mind in an interview)

One interesting question that came up during our discussion group was the following: What proportion is presentation versus substance? Please comment if you have some opinions on the matter.

The discussion topics did yield some humorous accounts of past infractions when it came to interpersonal etiquette (so I hear from the other sessions). The story I liked best was one in which one of the mentors recalled getting peed on in a subway car.

The Lighter Side of Morris Academy Mentors

After going through my online picture album, I'm realizing that the mentoring team, both mentors and students alike, represent a wide and nutty assortment of characters. The following photo-montage is meant to be a random sampling of it. I hope that you enjoy the lighter side of Morris Academy Mentors.