Thread: A bit unfair...
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Unread 23-02-2002, 13:37
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Junkyarddawg, good post. I agree with just about everything you said.

Having been one of the founders (all of whom were students), on my team, I feel like I have a pretty good idea of the intention of Inspiration vs. the desire to just win some competition. When I started our robotics team, I honestly couldn't have imagined that our robot could possibly have come out as well as it did. I just wanted to start a new program at my school that would give students the opportunities to learn about and apply engineering skills while having fun at the same time. I wanted all the people that I knew who were smart but didn't have anything to apply themselves to, to maybe find their nitch in making things - that's what engineering is all about, isn't it?

Personally, I think that if the only way for a team to inspire their students is with the help of engineers in building the robot, that there is no problem with that. In fact, there are some things that can only be gained by watching other engineers at work that my team (being completely student run and built) missed out on. And to me, these very cool robots capable of incredible things that will be competing with us are an inspiration to us in terms of a demonstration of the amazing things in general that humans can accomplish.

However, the "unfair vibe" I keep getting off of a number of the all-student people doesn't involve inspiration in the least. And anyone that tries to respond to the issue by saying "this competition is about inspiration and not about winning" is missing the point completely and just making these students more frustrated. I gurantee you that these students are among the most inspired you will come across. They know all about inspiration and are hooked on building more so than a lot of the engineers out there. What I believe most of them feel like they're missing out on is the recogition of being the ones that built the robot. The teams that do well do tend to be the teams that are engineer built, and these teams are rewarded and recognized, in spite of the fact that what they did might not have been any more challenging for them than a typical day of work for their engineers. The students on these teams do come off looking as more competant than the students on other teams and when someone who might not have touched a robot in their life says "My Team won at the FIRST national robotics competition" colleges ARE going to look at these students in a better light than those who say "My team came in dead last but we built the whole robot ourselves." (Granted, I would hope that students could turn this into an awesome application essay, but sadly those of us that are good at building are often not the best writers - but that is a problem with the college application process and is neither here nor there.) What is sad is that some of these students may not be good at anything else and thought "well at least I can show people I'm good at making robots." And now that they are realizing they have been beaten by a bunch of people completely out of their league are wondering what the point was. If you honestly sit down and think about it there is no way you can tell me that a group of students that spent 6 weeks building the robot by themselves, is going to, upon being beaten by a team of engineers, just say "Oh, but the students on the other team were so inspired - they deserve to look better than us." Human nature simply does not work that way. And, the fact of the matter is that the students who build the robot on their own are the most inspired of anyone. Yet what seems to end up happening is that their robot inevitably loses, they get no recognition, and the people that don't take the time to go up and talk to them (because there is nothing exteriorly spectacular about their them) don't even realize that it's a 100% student built team and just assume their engineers weren't quite as good, so the students don't even get credit for what they did do.

Any 100% student team should be an inspiration to everyone. They show us that you don't need an engineering degree, or super fancy tools to succeed - all you need is the desire to build something. These students, if you ask me, are the real superstars. They are not watching engineers and aspiring to be just like them. They have already become engineers and know what they are capable of doing. They have already done what some students are merely being inspired to do in the future. And when these students say that things "aren't fair" give them some recognition, because it's never going to be fair until they get credit for what they've accomplished.
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