[Alyssa]

To Sam, and the rest of the members of F4 -

Firstly, I’d like to start off by saying that the only reason I felt the need to post this was on account of the fact that you all seem to be scared of mentors and believe that they are some type of overbearing force that you need to revolt against. Thus, maybe as a student (at least, my last 2 days as a student), I’ll have a different impact on you all.

To start off, those who know me both online and in real life, know that I’m someone who can get quite defensive about the decisions I make, and get even more heated about certain topics I’m very passionate about. FIRST robotics, women’s rights, my friends and my family are all topics that I’ll get super intense about and feel the need to comment on.

One more thing I can add to the list of things I’m really passionate about is my love and respect for my mentors. My mentors are people that have put countless hours into me as an engineer as well as a person. They’re people that I constantly go to about anything in life, and whose opinions and insights are priceless to me. The idea of cutting them out of the way that I learn and grow is confounding to me, and it’s heartbreaking to think that other students would want to do that, and I think that is what F4 Connect will. This “new way to get help” as you call it will only cause a divide between students and mentors.

Another issue I see with F4 Connect is that while anonymity can be a good thing, it can also lead to a host of issues. Anonymity can lead to people saying whatever they want with no repercussions, and while you may think that red dots on Chief are “normal,” they’re a good way to keep people thinking twice about what they say and post.

The last biggest issue I see with F4 Connect is a point that Corsetto already brought up. While I’m all for students learning from other teams, I want to know which teams they’re learning from. I want them to be reaching out to the best of teams, and asking them for advice and for help with technical issues. If a freshman were to come to me with an idea the day after kickoff and tell me they saw it on one of 1114’s old robots, or 1678’s, I would happily look it up and be excited to see something awesome, and something I can learn from. But if they were to tell me they got it off of F4 Connect, knowing that the people on the site are made up of a very small sample size of students that have less than 4 years of experience, I would be quite a bit more skeptical.

Look back to when FIRST announced #2Champs. The entire community responded to the announcement, and rather than taking our input, they simply defended their decision and stubbornly have insisted that they are right ever since. Please try to take that into consideration before you defend yourself rather than listening to some of the valuable input that experienced veterans are offering you.

-Alyssa