Quote:
Originally Posted by tlivingd
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.
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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.