[Jared Russell]

For those that seem to think "6 weeks" is some sort of sacred number and that hard artificial deadlines are the best real world experiences for the students...

I honestly do not run into this situation very often professionally. A more realistic scenario for me is a longer period of time with intermittent milestones and an actual deadline (like a demo or delivery) at the end. It requires good project leadership and pacing yourself while avoiding procrastination.

I cannot get behind the "limit robot access" or "reduce the withholding allowance" arguments for other reasons as well. Maybe it is because my team doesn't have a practice space and can't really test our robot in match conditions until after "stop build day". Every team learns something about their robot once they have played a real match. Usually that means one or more improvements you need to make to the robot to get it to work the same way it did in the shop. We have taken advantage of withholding allowances at virtually every competition that 341 has competed in.

If you take away or significantly reduce the withholding allowance, how can I improve the robot? By frantically and stress-fully fabricating parts in my pit during practice day? Been there, that is a not a happy experience. During an unbagging window? Better, but unless you have all of the equipment you need in-house you are still limited in what you can actually accomplish.

There is virtually no analog in real world engineering for a "build the whole thing, never test it except on the bench, and if it doesn't work you won't have a chance to improve it" project.