Something I noticed when I was reading through all these posts:
- High school students rarely admitted they were burnt out
Even when they claimed that they were burnt out, it was on a small level -- not large enough to actually quit FIRST or take a break for at least a season. Many students claimed that they would never get burnt out when it came to FIRST. I used to be like that. Senior year of high school, information was being collected for yearbooks:
Where do you see yourself 5 years from now? Just out of college with a bachelors degree, still doing FIRST -- either for my old team or for a new one that I've started.
Where do you see yourself 10 years from now? Still doing FIRST, a full time engineering job, maybe married (to someone that does FIRST) with a pickup truck for easy transport of robots or materials to make robot related things.
I also had the dream of having a machine shop in the basement of my house when I grew up, that way FIRST could be done in my house.
- College students had either burnt out totally, talk themselves out of quitting each year, take preventative burn out measures, or are still too new to doing FIRST & college to realize that they may get burnt out sooner than later.
I'm one of the college students (well, I've graduated now) who burned out. I was all gung-ho about FIRST for my first two years at WPI.
Freshman year I let my grades slip quite a bit -- mom wasn't too thrilled about that. I did a lot that year 'cause I wanted to show that I was good enough for the team. I just came out of running my old team, I was ready to run the new team -- I needed to prove myself. So, I did as much FIRST as was physically possible: I pulled all nighters, I skipped classes, I slept in the shop sometimes...
Sophomore year I was still totally addicted. I helped run the team and I was Head Scout. I was happy that I was helping run the team, and I was in charge of scouting -- what I loved when I was in high school. I was getting to do more administration stuff than engineering stuff. At the end of the year, I started bashing heads with someone and felt as if I wasn't getting any appreciation for all the work I had been doing. (I got recognition once a year for all the scouting efforts.) At the end of that year, I had decided that I likely wasn't going to continue doing FIRST.
The summer before Junior year, I danced almost every night of the week. It made me realize just how much I loved to dance previously. When I went back to WPI for Junior year, I still kept my feet wet with organizational things. Before kickoff came around, I announced that I was no longer going to be doing FIRST for T190. I had really started to focus more on school, and dancing was a necessity for me.
FIRST is great. I love seeing students grow because of something that I had been doing. My problem came when the stress outweighed what I got out of seeing students grow.
- Engineers have burnt out, have ways of getting around burnout each year, or have it worked out so that burnout isn't even an issue.
I can't really relate this part to my personal experience, but I have seen burnout overcome by many different people. Andy Baker, Joe Johnson, Mike Martus, Bryan Lee, Ken Stafford, Sam Leone, Bill Beatty... I'm sure there are more, but I fear that if I list some people, they may have burnt out by now without my knowing it.
...and that's my story.
Kate