[Pavan Dave]

Taking pride in not having engineers and building robots that work but perform like crap [for a lack of better words] is not the goal of FIRST. Sure you learned something but the fact of the matter is you could have gained more if you had a few engineers go "if we did this, you could ____" and in turm could have done better in competition.

I take comments like "100% Student build and proud" are worthy of a "Certificate of Ignorance/Arrogance"

I've jumped from a team where there was a lot of mentor involvement to one with very little.

At some times involvement was to the extent of around 40-50% (because students were not allowed to use the machines due to facility rules) but the ideas, were 80% students, they were just fine tuned with trial, error, and experience.

Now at a school where there is 80% involvement, sure the students can do a lot, they have to make with whats there, but they could grasp so much more if they had the experience I had when I was a student, and we're currently getting more mentors in more advisement and experienced roles.

Students have an idea. Engineers work with students to turn their ideas into a competitive robot. The rest is up to the Coaching staff...So if you're in the Dallas area and you're looking for an offensive coordinator position for a robotics team, we're taking resumes!

Pavan Davé