Re: What to do when the odds seem stacked against me?
 

I see mentors as the guardrails and those little bumps on the highway to make sure the officers of the team don't veer the design into the woods. An ideal mentor also has a hand next to the emergency break in the car.

It's important to make sure the mentors and senior students of the team have a good working relationship, since those members tend to be liaisons between the mentors and the other team members.

Re: What to do when the odds seem stacked against me?
 

There are a few things going on here.

It sounds like your team maybe having internal mentoring issues that need to be addressed. When I was a senior student, the machine was very mentor driven, meaning the students had very little input as to the machines functionality. And I felt the same way you did, "this isn't anything we want to build". This maybe going on with your team, but I'm not sure.
In that final year where we had very little input, I personally stepped outside my comfort zone and became a part of a completely different sub-team and had to work as basically a rookie. I learned a lot about myself and about something different.


Now as a Mentor we are a rookie team of about 12 students and of those about 6-8 are there nearly every day we meet, and I personally had a lot of the same feelings of lack of confidence in our team. I'm getting through that and discovering a lot of things about my team that is really surprising, refreshing and we are growing confidence in ourselves nearly every day we meet. Many of them are trying their hardest to make this successful. After going to the local kickoff our small team discovered how big FIRST really is. Only 4 students were able to make kickoff in town and their eyes were opened and they were very intimidated seeing teams of 25 to 35+ students. We know we have a lot going against us, but we will be at the regional with more than a plywood box and we're giving it our all and we are willing to work just as hard with others who are on the field with us.
I remember as a student that I, along with a small core of students were able to put in 6 days a week till midnight or later, because FIRST was all we really had this time of year. Now mentoring and discovering all the additional activities students do is mind blowing! Yes these cut into 'FIRST time'. You should not penalize fellow teammates for other prior commitments.


I do agree with others on the more personal topics.
This is a team event both on the playing field, and at your own FIRST team. Unfortunately in life we don't always get our way, but it's how we deal with those ways that makes us successful. As hard as it is to hear, maybe you do need to think about how you work with a team and take this year to work on yourself, and less on some machine. I think you'll find when the 2012 FIRST season is over that you really did help the team a lot bettering how you interact with a team.

Re: What to do when the odds seem stacked against me?
 

Look, I understand exactly where you are coming from. I've been in your position where I felt unappreciated and completely blown off. Really, there are only a couple of things to do about that.

The first is to keep on giving your advice, and when they say no, try to get a more detailed explanation of why. Talk about it. Don't let this fester in the dark. Let them know clearly what you think and, more importantly, why you do.

The second thing is that it seems like you are most definitely frustrated. I hate to say it, but when it is obvious that when someone is frustrated , then the people they approach will not react well, generally speaking. I know this simply because I tried it out at work one day. I spent a while being courteous but not all welcoming and generally just being emotionally cold. It was all business and that hour or so was one of the worst times at work I have ever had. It wasn't fun, it was slow, it was just bad. But when I was being really upbeat, the time went way faster, and was more enjoyable.

As to how I try to be upbeat, I would recommend a video made by Sean "Day[9]" Plott on Being Relentlessly Positive. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iCqwwTfXr1Q

Re: What to do when the odds seem stacked against me?
 

I have always been in the programming subgroup, which is far from mentor driven. This year is the first year in my tenure that there was a "serious" mentor, it is still mostly student run; the mentor is more like a babysitter position in software, or if we have any questions on life as a programmer in the real world. My rookie year, the software mentors were more like "tech support". All the work was on my shoulders. Last year, there were no mentors, all students on software. Our team's mentality is the student built mentality. I've heard that mentors have serious impact on the design of the physical robot. I would not be surprised. Most of the design group is rookies, and you know how easily influenced they are. I can even pick out who just "follows" me when we discuss. May be that is why my mentor called me a pied piper.

Well I have no option but to stay on the software team. I have told some of the students in the design group to push for something different.

Re: What to do when the odds seem stacked against me?
 

You know what, I realize something... Stuff like this is going to happen all my life. My adviser and I may collide in grad school, my professors and I might collide during research, and eventually, I'll be on the receiving end when I am a professor and the student and I will have different schools of thought. I need to learn how to be more diplomatic while not just agreeing with everyone.

I just was an aggressive, young, somewhat reckless risk taker. My mentor is an experienced, conservative engineer. He worked for NASA as a systems engineer, of course he would be conservative; his projects would have cost him years and millions of dollars if they failed. That mentality transferred over to Robotics. I guess mindsets shift as you age. He would rather have us fail at competing than fail at building anything.