Quote:
Originally Posted by PayneTrain
I have been involved with teams that can trace their greatest successes by learning from glaring failures that resulted in ineffective robots. Let's try working on self-evaluation and suggesting a positive, constant pursuit of the impossible goal of perfection and not fighting over the same pound of flesh that has been picked at by the hivemind for years.
|
Same here. 3929's robots so far have been comparative failures to what the team has been trying to achieve. The same can be said for 2495's past robots. 3929's students, since the team's inception, have always been taught to look up to those better than them and to achieve greatness from within, not bring others down. They had what I could call a 90% student designed robot that did not perform well at their first event this season. However, these kids aren't taught to give up and point fingers to other teams for having better machines, they're taught to correct issues and improve for the next event. At their second event they did comparatively well and were even semifinalists. 2495's students in the past have had some sort of attitude about "better" teams, but all it takes is someone to show them that it is better to fix things in your own team than to pick out what you think are flaws in another.
I think that if you are sheltering students with the notion that teams around them have unfair advantages, you are underestimating the resolve of a truly competitive student. Don't babysit students and tell them there's nothing wrong with how things went down, mentors and students all need criticism to learn. In a few years, 3929's students and mentors will have learned from mistakes and will look to other teams to grab positive ideals from others to make themselves better. In the end, I don't mind too much who has what amount of involvement in the production of a machine, it is just a machine, I do care that the mentors are teaching their students about the desire to be better by correcting flaws within the team.