[John Bono]

1) Try making an offer to someone who has sway, not the kid who got banished from the pit area to the scouting for his annoyingness. And I have no problem with someone living in a machine shop--that just allows for nifty stuff to be made more easily. We don't really need any machine shop work this year (although it would've been slightly useful a couple weeks ago), and there's really no one with time to deal with a machine shop. We have 1 advisor and 1 other mentor. We have about seven whole members on our team, and otherwise, I really don't know why we're not getting any help from a machine shop. I'll have to ask the boss about that. True, I by no means normally show gracious proffessionalism, especially when confronted with an opposing philosophy to my own. I think it inflates a child's ego when you make a really nice, expensive toy, then tell them to go play with it. There are many students out there that would be very happy to do EVERYTHING on a robot at any High School I could imagine--it might just take a little longer for them to learn how at some vs. others. Anyway--with the kid metaphor: how many people have you seen become a better person by being told how their new expensive toy works? This is not a mecha anime--you don't have to give the super expensive robot to some random kid who thinks it's cool.
It just eats me up inside to walk around the pits, watching more adults work than students. While the mentors go through the motions that they've been through a dozen times, the kids sit on the sidelines and play a game of Magic (not that I dislike Magic: the Gathering--I just think there's something more pressing going on at the time). I'm going to wager that someone learns a lot more holding the drill than watching someone else wield it. We (the students) aren't supposed to learn what designing a robot is, they're supposed to learn how to design it themselves, not sit on the sidelines and be "inspired."

...Ah, I love arguing...