Quote:
Originally Posted by WMFlip16
Hello,
I am a junior on team 2137 and have been involved in FIRST since I was on an FLL team in 2008. We recently had our first competition of the year at Waterford and did ok. On our second day of the competetion, me and my dad went in early because i had some work to do with my code. We moved into the cafeteria and I started debugging the code and adjusting things. After a while, some mentors came in and sat down at a table and began talking. They talked of things that needed to change, which I have no problem with, and how they could improve it. The part that i had a problem with was when a mentor started talking about what HE had changed, and what HE had did, which bugged me. It also bugged me that the team won an award for their programming.
This brings up a question.
Is this your team? Is winning more important than learning? Is it really helping inspire or teach students? So please mentors, let us do all the work, Its better that way. Maybe you too can win the award titled "I dont do anything" like our programming mentor did.
Sincerely, A Peeved Programmer
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What others have said is true: you don't really know the whole story.
I actually thought you were talking about my team and me specifically as a mentor until I saw that you weren't at the Arizona Regional.
During the competition, our lead programmer, who was also responsible for the chairman's award video, had to take a break to finish the video (no minute like the last minute! We do it Plasma Style!) In the meantime, the pit crew was having troubles getting the robot working on the practice field.
So, as the programming mentor, I filled in for our programmer and helped the pit crew, and also finished some outstanding code/sensor calibrations so that our robot could aim. When I needed a lunch break and the pit crew seemed about done, I came back to the cafeteria and told the programmer what I had done while he was busy.
Then we won the programming (Innovation in Control) award for the work that the students had done.
In summary: you have to spend an entire build season with a team before you can assume that their mentors are doing all of the work.