Re: How to Get New Members to Stay?
 

[quote=Chief Hedgehog;1589973
4607 has been graduating 10-13 members each year for our short four year existence - and every year we bring in a load of 10th and 11th grade students that have an immediate impact. Next year we will be returning 16 seniors - and all but two have at least 2 years on the team. However, we noticed that the 9th grade students were not ready to take on the tasks and the time constraints required by our FRC season - and a lot of this is due to their maturity and lack of a drivers license.

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Is it just me, or does anyone else think that freshmen are getting less and less mature each year? I'm a sophmore right now, the freshman class last year (the one i was in) was mature and dedicated to the work. The freshman before us were even more mature. But this years freshman are a bunch of goofballs who like to pretend to drill each others brains out and take nothing seriously, and I've been told that next year is even worse :P .

Re: How to Get New Members to Stay?
 

I'm a sophomore as well, and a lot of our class was really involved in just extracurriculars in general while this year's freshmen really haven't been. The freshmen we did attract were all fairly mature at least compared to some of their classmate, and even some of my classmates. On the other hand, I've also been told that our incoming freshmen next year are quite a bit worse. I think a lot of it is just how we perceive things to be.

Re: How to Get New Members to Stay?
 

In Book III of Odes, circa 20 BC, Horace wrote:
I took that Horace quotation from the page at this URL Get off my lawn, pull up your pants, turn down that racket, take out that piercing, get a haircut, cover up that tattoo, put on some decent clothes, stop staring at your phone, and get a real job. :D

There are 14 additional quotes there. One rails against silk umbrellas; :eek: another against playing too much chess. :eek: Apparently there was very little entropy in human society long ago, because things have been steadily going downhill for over 2000 years, and we haven't hit bottom yet.

Re: How to Get New Members to Stay?
 

There may or may not be a long term trend here, but it's much less than the variation among classes. Each class seems to have it's own levels of maturity, ambition, and commitment. There's plenty of variation within each class, of course. There's no real pattern I've recognized, but it does go back and forth fairly quickly - possibly related to the phase of El Niño / La Niña / Southern Oscillation when they were born:p.

Re: How to Get New Members to Stay?
 

There is an ebb and flow for all things - and gauging maturation on a yearly basis is not a great way to measure things. In other words, every year the Middle School Staff tells me that this is the worst group of 8th grade students. Sometimes they are correct, but more often than not they are wrong.

I will let you know if this is the worst group of freshman 3 years from now...

Re: How to Get New Members to Stay?
 

From my experience, the perceived maturity of any group of people can be greatly affected by a small group of individuals. You'll have classes come through that have one or two "troublemakers", and those individuals will get everyone riled up and make a bad impression. Then you'll get classes without those individuals, and others will make a strong good impression. Then, when you're talking about taking just a portion of those students for a robotics team, it can be hit or miss - you may get the "good" students one year, and the "troublemakers" the next.

Regardless of who you get on your team, or how they/their class is perceived, our job doesn't change. Both the mentors and the older students need to serve as role models, set expectations, and mentor the new students!

Re: How to Get New Members to Stay?
 

100 percent!