Quote:
Originally Posted by Rich Kressly
Judging or evaluating ANYTHING from a distance is dangerous. Even for those who know team members well on other teams. Anything that keeps students, mentors, and teams in FIRST is a good thing. What works for my team, might not work for yours ... yadda, yadda ...
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Great Post. I thought that our teams this year would have been a little happier about how things were run this year to help others. It is a little sad that some are not. We have barely enough mentors to run our own team (More than enough work, global travel etc..). Most of the mentors also have toddlers at home that also have many needs. This year, all nighters at the tech center for FIRST instead of my 1 year old didn't seem like the fantastic idea it used to for the past nine years..... The bar is rasied every year, the rookie teams are coming in with fantasitc robots and strategy. The idea of helping the three teams (We actually helped 4) this year and making individual designs, helping debug, rebuilding etc.... just isn't possible with the amount of resources that we have available. Ask most machinists, making 3 of the same part is easier than 3 totally different parts. Much of the time is in the setup. We now also have spare parts that all three teams can use. I say this every year, most mentors in FIRST have little to gain except helping the students to find their way now and hoping it will have helped them as they head into collage and later into real life. I don't have a son or daughter on the team, I am not a teacher for the school, I don't need this on my resume. This is all volunteer for us and the thought of shutting out teams that need some help because we didn't want their robot to look like ours just isn't an option. I would actually hope others would follow this strategy if another team comes to you for help.
Matt