The team at the World Championships in Houston. Author Lily Bruno is on the right.

When I found out I was a FIRST Dean’s List finalist my heart skipped a beat. In FIRST robotics, the most prestigious award an individual can receive is the Dean’s List award. Dean’s List finalists and winners are individuals who embody the core values of FIRST. These students are leaders on their teams and work to advance and advocate for FIRST in their communities. 

Receiving this award was a huge honor, but it also came with a lot of pressure. It meant being a representative of Minnesota and Duluth robotics on the global stage. 

While I had punched my ticket to the World Championship in Houston Texas, my team hadn’t yet. In just a few weeks, at the State Tournament, my team advanced, for the first time, to the World Championship. 

Hearing my name called for Dean’s List and then receiving an award with my team helped me fully realize all the hard work over many years that my team and I had put in. It was incredible to see how far we had come. From a team of mostly sixth graders who had to rebuild their robot chassis three times to now being role models in the Minnesota robotics community, it was amazing to see how much we had grown as a team over the years. 

Being at the World Championship reminded me of how far we had come, but it also showed me how much more we still hadn’t learned. Every team had a different robot design, a new programming solution, or a unique passion project. 

From a robot who could score 80 points in 30 seconds using incredible coding and building innovations (team #11260 Up a Creek Robotics), to a team who created a program that reminded teams to arrive at their matches on time (team #14725 Java The Hutts), interacting with so many different teams reminded me of what can really be accomplished with the skills learned in robotics as well as the versatility of FIRST. 

These accomplishments were on full display at the Dean’s List finalists award lunch. The lunch was a great experience and talking to so many incredible young people was very educational. We also had the honor of listening to FIRST founder and namesake of the Dean’s List Award, Dean Kamen. 

In his speech, Dean stressed the role finalists would play in the growth of robotics, especially as we grow to become future innovators and creative thinkers. 

As amazing as Dean’s speech was, it was not the speech that stood out to me. By far the best speech of the event was by Dean’s List Winner (2024) Darius De Biagi. 

In his speech, Darius talked about how even though recognition is great it doesn’t take away the accomplishments of everything that teams and individuals have worked so hard for and that winning shouldn’t be the only way you define your success. This was very impactful to me as a listener. 
When doing robotics, or anything in life, there is always more you could be doing, accomplishing or working on. And sometimes that hard work is not always rewarded or acknowledged. I wasn’t chosen as one of the FTC Dean’s List Award winners, but not winning did not invalidate all the hard work I have put in or the impact I have had in my community via mentoring and outreach. It was amazing just to be recognized, and I’m proud of everything I’ve accomplished this season.  

I believe this lesson is the most important thing I learned at the FIRST World Championship. While my team was fortunate enough to win an award at Worlds, there were many of the 256 FTC teams that did not. That didn’t mean, however, that those teams didn’t work hard enough, learn enough or impact enough.

As I continue to do robotics and live my life, I will always remember not to define my success or journey by outward success alone, but by what I’ve learned and experienced, and how much I’ve grown personally.