[polytechnique]

I personally think that competition quality could really be increased if the deadline was eight weeks rather than six weeks... I'm a team captain right now, and I've seen the same thing happen with my team for the three years I've completed. The stressful rush all the way through, having to ditch schoolwork (often with slipping grades) to finish a robot... it's a lot of pressure on high school students.

Six weeks for some teams, especially those with small amounts of man-hours available to them or shorthanded teams, I think is too short. It makes me really sad every time I see a team struggling to get their robot to function properly... when they're obviously shorthanded, scrounging for resources... and then to be crushed by a much higher-funded, higher-resource team with prestige and four banners hanging off their pits with a practice bot on display, etc.

It's a hard problem. But I think some teams just don't have the man-hours, resources or funding to assemble a competitive robot. I feel like getting steamrolled by another team without ever having a fighting chance doesn't inspire kids into a love of science in technology, but instead kinda... turn them away from it. I don't feel like that's what FIRST stands for.