[David Dawson]

As a mentor I am a bit more calm when I go to the MI districts and its easy to see why some students are upset and act the way they do. First off they are High School students that interpret everything they see at face value and use assumptions or mentor input to fill in the gaps about the things they don't know. To make things easier I'm only going to speak of teams that built robots that function the way they are supposed to 70% of the time.

So when team 9999 builds a good bot that works and plays the game like it was designed to, faces a 217 254 and 33 alliance or just one powerhouse team like 1114 they lose and then get to thinking. First comes the simple thoughts about unique great ideas like 33's arm last year or 233's arm in 07, works and how team 9999 can build them. That's looking at robotics at face value which is ok.

Where students on teams like 9999 go wrong is when they don't know how something works like 148's sheet metal or wildstangs drive trains. They then assume it was mentor built without knowing what those teams did in the first place to build those bots. You would think this is an easy fix with a little mentor guidance. But instead of mentors doing research and understanding what the power house teams do and inform their students on what to do. They take the easy way out and say a mentor did it.

TL;DR Students will be students, It's the mentors job to do the right thing.