|
do you guys attend classes regularly during the time between kickoff and shipment?
well I was wondering how it is in other school considering the amount of time
needed to invest in the FIRST project, I know I'm at the project every day (Sunday-Thursday) from around 4:30PM to anywhere between 1 and 7AM (depending on our mentor since, for insurance reasons, we have to stay with a supervising teacher adult) the school is alright with us missing the classes (being a senior I only have about 4 different ones) and even gives the FIRST students special TEST dates so we can study after the project is over is this like that in all schools? |
Re: do you guys attend classes regularly during the time between kickoff and shipment?
wow your school is kind of awesome.
FIRST at our schools isnt well known and very few teachers will even let us make up work when we miss school for say competitions. they dont let us turn in homework late even if we're at school working for 6 hours. |
Re: do you guys attend classes regularly during the time between kickoff and shipment
I am a Junior in highschool, and I am getting prepared to go to Clarkson NEXT YEAR.
I almost HAVE to be in class everyday, otherwise I will get behind. We have block scheduling at my school, miss a day and you miss a lot. I also do not have any free periods. My schedule is fully loaded. It is a huge pain with FIRST and all. Especially because I also WORK Mondays, Fridays and Sundays at a local restaurant. And I have all these college deadlines and trying to find scholarships. I am nearly going crazy! :ahh: Last night I went to robotics around 6:00 and didnt get home until around 12:30 [Mind you, I commute because I go to help the Penfield Robotics Team, which is 30 min away.] But, even though I get 3-5 hours of sleep a night and struggle to get all my homework in on time. I manage. And well, robotics for me has definately been worth all the stress :) I cant wait for a break though. I have school off the week of ship. And I took off of work, so I will have a nice 5 days to relax. :rolleyes: |
Re: do you guys attend classes regularly during the time between kickoff and shipment
wow how do you do it? seriously all I have done the past month was go to FIRST go to sleep and then go to FIRST, I missed FIRST I think only 2 times
once because we all had our FINALS in literature (yeha, one and half day of studying was all I got), yay no more literature =) and the other day off was because I had to go do some psycho-analitic tests or something for the army... I really don't understand how you do it with only 3 hours of sleep, your a superwomen :D |
Re: do you guys attend classes regularly during the time between kickoff and shipment
no mercy at our school... its always fun to be working till say 2 in the morning then have 2.5 hours sleep before needing to do my chores... it is the very unfortunate thing of living on a farm, being on robotics, and having a school that doesn't grasp the size of the project.
|
Re: do you guys attend classes regularly during the time between kickoff and shipment?
I would never miss class now that I’m paying for it. BUT! Right now I’m on a co-op term (working and not at school) so I can get a few days off for comps but that’s about it (actually me working is considered class by my school). I planned it that way :D Back when I was in High School at old TTA about a fourth of our school was on first so we had some exceptions but most of the time it was just like any other day. Near the end of the build however teacher noticed we were very tired and gave a few of devoted 2am-ers slack. But right now I like my schedule; I go to work get out at 3:30 head straight for my sponsor's building and work on robots till 10-11.
|
Re: do you guys attend classes regularly during the time between kickoff and shipment?
I am in the same boat as Albie. I am doing a co-op for school and do not attend classes this term. However, my co-op and where I currently live is more than an hour from where my team is located. Because of this, I can usually only come down on weekends and a couple times during the week. I wish that I could help more, especially because for the last 3 years, I was there everyday.
|
Re: do you guys attend classes regularly during the time between kickoff and shipment?
your sponsor building? our lab and workshop are in the school, so some of us just sleep a few hours, wake up and go to class (only problem is showers, luckily typing dosent make you sweat much)
how do you build your robot by working only 4 hours a day? the least I was this year was 7 hours or so |
Re: do you guys attend classes regularly during the time between kickoff and shipment?
I definitely attend classes regularly during build season. Even though attendance isn't taken for most of my classes, it is important that I go because if I don't, it is guaranteed that I will miss plenty of material.
During high school, my school required that we were present at the day's worth of classes. If we weren't, we were by no means allowed to attend robotics after school; doing so would merit a detention. In the case that we had a competition, we had to talk to each of our teachers about possible extensions. It's hard to focus on something other than FIRST during the build season, but I always try to keep in mind that school, graduating with good grades, and getting a good job are my priorities. After all, FIRST is always going to be around. My chance to pull off a certain grade in a class? That only comes by once. |
Re: do you guys attend classes regularly during the time between kickoff and shipment?
I attend my classes at my home school, since our FIRST team is based out of Erie 1 BOCES-Harkness center. But at Harkness, the FIRST project is considered course work basically, so I do programming during that time.
|
Re: do you guys attend classes regularly during the time between kickoff and shipment?
Quote:
|
Re: do you guys attend classes regularly during the time between kickoff and shipment?
Beause of first i have a full day. i go to school in the mornings i go to work in the afternoon and i go to the shop at night and on the weekends. if i didnt have first i would be much further ahead in school thats for shure
|
Re: do you guys attend classes regularly during the time between kickoff and shipment?
Yeah, with college classes, mentoring Team 204, and FIRST volunteering and trying to find a new job, it is pretty stressful but enjoyable. We work from Mon to Thurs 2:30 to 6:30 and the last 3 weeks of build season, we come in on Sat from 9:00 to 2:00. But like I tell my students and even myself sometimes, classes and maintain good grades are more important than trying to figure out why a CIM motor goes in a wrong direction. You need to stay on top of your classes or you will be back as a returning freshman on next year's team.
|
Re: do you guys attend classes regularly during the time between kickoff and shipment?
I attend 6 classes a day but i take 8 classes at a time. Its been so stressful the last few weeks with quizzes, tests and other various essays and projects. I am also going for my gold award in Girl Scouts, so that takes a few hours out of my week too. Thank goodness for vacation next week...
and think of it this way, build season is heading into its final two weekends...almost there you guys! :rolleyes: |
Re: do you guys attend classes regularly during the time between kickoff and shipment
I am in the same boat as other in this thread... I am on co-op working instead of classes. I am very lucky that my workplace knows all about FIRST and supports it so i can take time off for working with a team and going to competitions. I learned my early years in college that the only thing you get from doing college and classes is a low GPA.
|
Re: do you guys attend classes regularly during the time between kickoff and shipment
apparently we're different, because we only work until like 8 at night, and so we can't miss class, because we don't have any at night
|
Re: do you guys attend classes regularly during the time between kickoff and shipment
oh I don't have any class at night, but since we are at school until 6-7AM the school lets us sleep during school times, the bummer is that in the end of the project I'm gonna have a tough problem shifting the hours back so I go to sleep at the evening time and wakeup at 7AM and not vice-versa
|
Re: do you guys attend classes regularly during the time between kickoff and shipment
We work from around 3PM to 6PM everyday after school, 10AM to 5PM(usually) on Saturdays, and don't meet at all on Sundays so there's no excuse for any of us to miss any classes. D:
|
Re: do you guys attend classes regularly during the time between kickoff and shipment
We work:
Wednesday 3-8 after school Friday 3-9 after school Saturday 10-5 Sunday 1-6 I wouldn't miss school for FIRST, anyway, unless it was extremely important |
Re: do you guys attend classes regularly during the time between kickoff and shipment
I wish! Our school won't even let us fund raise during school hours, let alone miss classes. They're even throwing a big stink about a competition we're heading to in a little over a week. They won't let us bring along our Juniors because HSPA's are the FOLLOWING week. Jerks. :mad:
We work on it when we can, but only have 2 mentors, one is a teacher, and one is a parent. So we have to work around their hours. This is my first season and I feel as though I've sold my soul to a Devil Driver nonetheless. It's over soon, right? :( |
Re: do you guys attend classes regularly during the time between kickoff and shipment
i work till 11 and stuff on the robot, drive 30 min back, and then finally start 3 AP classes + other classes worth of hw.
i have a full schedule i cant miss. missing them for the competitions is gonna be hard enough. im actually wondering if i really wanna take those tests. oh and no excuses on the missing hw or lack of attention.... thank god we're almost there., |
Re: do you guys attend classes regularly during the time between kickoff and shipment
Block Classes and no free bits. It sucks. School doesnt understand the size of first so we can't even turn in homework late. They treat it as if it was just a small after school 3-4 program..... :(
They only just allowed the mentor who works at the school to take study hall off. |
Re: do you guys attend classes regularly during the time between kickoff and shipment?
im just addicted to first and classes are 2nd priority...first comes animation :eek: lol....yay for first
|
Re: do you guys attend classes regularly during the time between kickoff and shipment
Quote:
Round about April you'll be ready for another season, and then realize it's not going to start until January.... I cannot believe some of you. Maybe I'm getting old, but it hurts to go more than 6 hours a day - start at 3:30 when the kids get out of school (my boss is very understanding), goes to at least 8 pm, sometimes (like now, crunch time) 10 pm. Kids do the same, AND go to all classes. Every day I thank my deity for Caffeine. Don |
Re: do you guys attend classes regularly during the time between kickoff and shipment
We all go to classes regularly and then meet afterschool and on weekends. The school is really cool about competitions (our pricipal and assistant principal are comming to the regional!) and the teachers love having FIRST students in class (We provide the answer to "when are we ever going to use this stuff?"). our teachers are very flexible about homework and tests, but we usually don't have any problems except on competition days.
|
Re: do you guys attend classes regularly during the time between kickoff and shipment
Personally, I can't afford to miss any school, but when it comes down to the last week, the true diehards of our team will "skip" a few days of school and spend the day building
|
Re: do you guys attend classes regularly during the time between kickoff and shipment
Wow, I am in envy of those people whose schools cut them any slack in any way. While most of our teachers and staff support the team, academics are always a priority. We always have a semester change in the middle of the season, and I had an easy first semester, so I had lots of time for robotics, then second semester rolled around, and Calculus came into my life. Now I have much less time available, but spend the same time at robotics. Not the best idea I have ever had. The upshot? I attend all my classes and robotics and lose sleep.
|
Re: do you guys attend classes regularly during the time between kickoff and shipment
why don't you guys talk with your principal about this?
just tell them that you will do everything during the month after shipment, this will mean that instead of 1.5 months of extreme stress, you'll have 2.5months of moderate stress, that will clear up more time for the robot, and I'm sure that with more time spent the quality of FIRST will go up, if the quality of this competition (which is already very high) goes up, so will it's popularity AND growth, after all, at the end of the day the goals of FIRST and of your schools are the same, if kids get a brake if they join FIRST, more of them will take interest in engineering and science, it works over here, I know that one of the MAIN reasons I joined robotics was because students who take this class appreciated and get a "break" when one is needed, one of the school-system main goals is to "create" (if you will), productive-citizens, I don't see a program more suitable to enhance that goal then FIRST. just my 2 cents =) |
Re: do you guys attend classes regularly during the time between kickoff and shipment?
we work on our bot only 3 hours a day, every day except sat, sun. on sat we work from 7:30-2:00 so we dont miss classes and our principal is a ^$#&^%$$&*($@(*&&*&($&*$!$&*^ so we couldnt miss class anyways.....unless we go around her and get permission from the super because its a district supported activity in Greece, we probaly could if it comes down to it......
|
Re: do you guys attend classes regularly during the time between kickoff and shipment?
although we have one of the best records out of any team in our school, it is only now, 12ish years after the team has been up do they know more than those kids that build the robot every time Team RoboRaiders is mentioned. Even the teachers that are advisor's don't let us off of homework, or anything.
|
Re: do you guys attend classes regularly during the time between kickoff and shipment?
Nimmy, while thats an amazing idea and something that probably works really well for you guys :D theres just too much variation in school board and school specific policies when it comes to FIRST. Our teacher-mentor has to fill out at least a dozen pages of paperwork for each regional we go on and we in turn have to fill out just as many to attend them. In my last three years of high school, I was lucky enough to have teachers understand the amount of effort that I put into school and when it came down to the end, especially for university marks and scholarship potential, they were generous enough to allow me a 0.5-1% bump up, unofficially speaking of course. But throughout the entire year, the only classes I missed were for competitions. I never skipped a single class for robotics. Even if you are dead tired, at least show up and explain and see if you can absorb any sort of information. If you are cordial and polite with your teachers, preach the values of FIRST to them, no self-respecting teacher is going to stop you from putting your best efforts into it. Just remember that no matter what, academics should come FIRST!
You work hard, you play hard when it comes to the regional competitions. Spend the time during build season either at robotics or working. It is very very hard not to do things with your friends during this time, but the payoff is well worth it at the end. As for attending robotics while in university, the great Shawn Lim, my boss and now a fellow alumni mentor at 188 explained to me that it was going to be quite difficult. It was probably more compounded for him since he attended Kettering =P. I am lucky enough be in international business, with only about 15 hours of class time a week at York University, which is only about 30-40 minutes away from 188's home base. I commute back and forth on free nights, usually Mondays, Thursdays to Sundays. Almost makes me feel like I am a high school student again. Also a final note to new college mentors like myself, remember your police checks! |
Re: do you guys attend classes regularly during the time between kickoff and shipment?
just my 2 cents:
our teachers dont really care what we are doing....whether we are on the floor sleeping or not, if we are sleeping or not paying attention, we get detention......yea kinda sucks but oh well |
Re: do you guys attend classes regularly during the time between kickoff and shipment?
I work from 6:30am to 5pm mon-thu, get off, drive a quarter of a mile, and stay at the shop until everyone else leaves (usually 9 or 10), I'm off fridays and weekends so friday I'm there at 3 until whenever and saturday starting at 9am, and sometimes sunday if we are working sunday (only day I missed was this past sunday when i woke up feeling like total crap and saw that it was snowing)
|
Re: do you guys attend classes regularly during the time between kickoff and shipment
attend my classes? yes
do all my homework? yea right :P |
Re: do you guys attend classes regularly during the time between kickoff and shipment?
seven classes and I'm hanging in there and in all classes(except sixth, cause I help with the build) my laptop is always out and I'm working on the code as much as I can. then after school until 8 or so(tonight was til 9:30 and so was last night) I work on the bot some more.
|
Re: do you guys attend classes regularly during the time between kickoff and shipment?
I think that these situations are caused by different school systems in the US and israel.
In israel, you earn "units" by doing tests in different subjects. This may be similar to your finals. To finish highschool you have to earn a certain amount of units by passing several tests in different subjects (math, english, history, citizenship, hebrew, literature and a major subject). As you can see, one of the requirements for finishing hishschool is majoring in a subject. For some students, the subject they are majoring in is robotics (there are literally hundreds of subjects you can major in, from physics to chemistry to bible, languages and even hotel management). Anyway, for some robotics majors, FIRST is their final project, meaning they can't get a high school diploma without doing it and writing a project about it. Most of the finals (like history, english, part of math, hebrew) are done in 10th and 11th grade, meaning that in 12th grade you really only do literature, math, citizenship and your major, which lets the school give you 6 weeks off of school to do your final project. For you there is school and FIRST, for us FIRST is school. I also think that school is taken in a whole different way by the American and Israeli youth. In israel, most finish with highschool, go to the army for 3 years and then do a trip around the world for about a year. Only after that, at the age of 23-24, only start to think about universities and do the Israeli equivalent of SAT's. In the US, highschool is basically a big race for colleges. Grades are taken very siriously. people study for hours a day, do extra curicular activities, and with the rest of their time study for the SAT's, all so they get into an IV league university. Highschool in Israel is a lot more relaxed, grades are not taken as seriously and people have time to really enjoy the last years before army and adulthood. They always have a chance to improve their grades after the army. (If anyone is interested, I can explain a bit more about the school system here. It is a quite interesting one, but really stupid and useless.) |
Re: do you guys attend classes regularly during the time between kickoff and shipment
Quote:
The system in europe, at least in some places, is somewhat similar, at least in regards to examinations being more important than "work". I really don't understand the whole concept of school "work".... |
Re: do you guys attend classes regularly during the time between kickoff and shipment?
Quote:
You must attend a very laid back, or supportive school. If any of our students skip a class they get three days of ISS and can not attend any school functions (ie build meetings) until their ISS time is up. As the sponsor, I can't miss class as I am the teacher. In all honesty, our school treats robotics kind of like a stepchild. We get no financial support from the school and the only time they show any interest is when they need us to do something for them. |
Re: do you guys attend classes regularly during the time between kickoff and shipment?
Our school is fairly strict on skipping class, and we don't get extensions for FIRST, as this is only our second year, and I can't imagine they will ever give us that. But some teachers are kind enough to look the other way when we pass out in class, or try to finish hw for other classes in their classes.
We try to work from 4-11 each night, if not later, but I'm in the tough situation of having a sport at the same time. If I miss too much track, I'll have to do a million laps when I start coming again, but it means I miss 3 hours of build time every day. I do know that during this final week, I've been trying to cut out early along with another guy, just to get some more stuff done. All I know is that once this is over I'm going to sleep for once, and I'll enjoy it! |
Re: do you guys attend classes regularly during the time between kickoff and shipment?
so let me get this straight...when you do FIRST, it's not part of your classes? I mean, you diploma\GPA whatever has nothing to do with FIRST? (except for it affecting it in a bad manner due to lack of sleep of course ;) )?
FIRST is about 1/3 of my diploma, and it will probably raise my Grade average by about 10%-20% not to mention the fact that if im lucky I might even get a scholarship in the US =) (*Crosses fingers*), something I could have never afford on my own... |
Re: do you guys attend classes regularly during the time between kickoff and shipment
Quote:
|
Re: do you guys attend classes regularly during the time between kickoff and shipment?
Quote:
|
Re: do you guys attend classes regularly during the time between kickoff and shipment?
well I hope robotics will be more wide spread as something you can major in as FIRST grows, that way the project will be like part of your GPA or like a "final-project", im sure it will raise the quality of the robots once school recognize it more
|
Re: do you guys attend classes regularly during the time between kickoff and shipment?
Well I go to high school half the day then the other half at tech. So from 12pm -10 pm I work on FIRST, everyday.
|
Re: do you guys attend classes regularly during the time between kickoff and shipment?
Quote:
Right now I am going to a local community college. I slack off in the quality of work I am doing right now because I am focused on FIRST. This is a bad thing that is going to hurt my grades. But next year I am going to a different college that is pretty far away down in Bocca Raton, this way I am not distracted by first. When I participated in First in high school, homework and class work was never an option. The only time that was excused was when we were at competition, and we were still expected to make up the work. This is pretty much what you are going to find anywhere in America. I don’t believe that you will see it as a major impact on your gpa here because there are many other classes that you are required to take. Our team meets after school till about 6 each mon, wed, and Thursdays, in addition for 6 hours on Sunday. We design what we need after school, send it off to the machine shop, they cut it the next day, then we get it by that evening, and assemble later that night. It’s a pretty efficient system that we have set up this year, providing the most free time for all the participants and mentors. I believe that you can learn more with an efficient schedule rather than one that is overworked. |
Re: do you guys attend classes regularly during the time between kickoff and shipment?
I suppose if someone cuts everything for you that's correct
but we do not have those rescources, nor do we feel we should use outside help infact it's a bit of a matter of pride not to use professional workshops\factories to assemble our pieces, the only thing we did want to get by a plant is that we wanted to make part of our robot out of composite materials (carbona fiber+kevlar sort of material) that are only assembable in a special high-degree oven, though I guess it would cut down on a lot of our work |
Re: do you guys attend classes regularly during the time between kickoff and shipment?
hman, my grades dropped a few points in each class , but my art class was wrecked( an entire letter grade down!!).
|
Re: do you guys attend classes regularly during the time between kickoff and shipment?
well...our school doesn't give us any breaks...so we have to plan our classes for the spring semester to deal with it...
we do, however, get competitions as field trip/excused absences |
Re: do you guys attend classes regularly during the time between kickoff and shipment?
Our students attend regular classes during the day and then work after school from 2 till 4 yes only 2 hours. up until this week now we work from 3:00 till about 8:30 with 2:00 -3:00 mandentory homework time. On the weekend however we will work till 10 or later on friday night and then saturday about 9 am till at least 10 pm saturday and Suday same hours. we also have no school monday so we will be working that day as well. we do hope to have some overnight work sessions and have great mentors that are willing to stay with us as long as we remain productive. we do however have food breaks where parents will make us eat icky healthy food (i am a parent)
We have a great group of tireless kids who are very dedicated to seeing this project through no matter what it takes. |
Re: do you guys attend classes regularly during the time between kickoff and shipment?
Our school allows us to work on the FIRST during class hours, depending on the teachers. It just depends on the person on whether or not that person would choose to do the work in class before heading to the project or to do it for homework. The only hard part is having to miss out on the class lecture and other detail information.
|
Re: do you guys attend classes regularly during the time between kickoff and shipment
Yes. Yes, we do. Our school doesn't even recognize us as a team, they think of us as a club. They give us no money. Most kids don't even know we exist. We are the third biggest club in the school, with a total population of around 3200. Our teachers wouldn't except, I'm working on my robot, as an excuse to miss hw much less school. And i'm a second term Junior, so i have tons of work.
|
Re: do you guys attend classes regularly during the time between kickoff and shipment
our team captain had to drop his AP physics class because he stop showing up. a lot of the teachers in my school will let us out of class to work on robotics. On a serious day of working none of the seniors go to class with or without permission from teachers.
|
Re: do you guys attend classes regularly during the time between kickoff and shipment
with me it's kind of like this:
"so then, I'm workin on the robot and my teacher comes up and he's like hey kid I thought I told you to...YA WHATEVER!!!" not really but kinda that's how it goes. |
Re: do you guys attend classes regularly during the time between kickoff and shipment?
Wow! our school we can't miss and classes due to FIRST. Teachers bearly let you make up the days missed during the competition. Also, we need to start working after school (2:30). We don't work on the robot at all during school time, unless you have our mentor for a class and he lets you work on the robot during class.
|
Re: do you guys attend classes regularly during the time between kickoff and shipment?
Skipping classes.... Bad, bad...
|
Re: do you guys attend classes regularly during the time between kickoff and shipment
Lucky for me, two of my classes are taught by our mentor, so I'm always working on FIRST stuff instead of the actual class work. Other than that, I attend all my other classes, and still put in another 5-6 hours after school, and 10+ hours on weekends and days off.
How about on the final ship date? For the past 2 years (and it looks like tomorrow will be the same), I've skipped all of my classes to do all of the final - hah, yeah, right, final - to continue working on the bot. One year, the paint on the shipping crate was still wet when the FedEx truck came. |
Re: do you guys attend classes regularly during the time between kickoff and shipment?
i have to attend my classes. since my team is rookie my teachers dont understand first yet so im not allowed to skip
|
| All times are GMT -5. The time now is 13:38. |
Powered by vBulletin® Version 3.6.4
Copyright ©2000 - 2017, Jelsoft Enterprises Ltd.
Copyright © Chief Delphi