In high school, there was always a significant drop in my grades during FIRST season. But just for the quarter when construction took place. This year, in college, my grades stayed just the same during the quarter (different version of quarter) when construction was going on. According to my parents, FIRST helped "focus" me (I don't know, it's what they told one of the professors from RIT). There was a significant influence on my grades from travel. That happened in spring quarter and there my grades were affected. SO I guess my biggest problem was a combination of organizing the travel, actually missing class, and then also recovering from the trips. None of that made it particularly easy to keep my grades up but I could be doing a lot worse so I'm not complaining.
Matt