[Dmentor]

I’m progressing well this year through what I think of as the FRC equivalent of the Kübler-Ross model (commonly known as the five stages of grief). I imagine that there are many other folks going through this as well and hopefully we won’t dwell too much more on the negative aspects. Anyways, here’s where I am in my process:

First came “awe”. What an awesome robot! Function AND form nicely wrapped together! Great video! What an awesome TEAM!

Next came “envy”. Wish we could create a robot like that. Wish we had such an established and well-grounded design process. Wish we had access to such a great world-class production facility. Wish I could be part of a team like that.

Followed quickly by “depression”. How can we compete with that? Am I lacking as a mentor since we aren’t capable of creating robots like? Why even try?

Hopefully I’m solidly into the “acceptance” phase now. Regardless of how good any team is, I can still reach out to my team and inspire them in their pursuit of STEM fields. We can still play Breakaway to the best of our abilities. And since FRC is played with alliances of three teams, any robot that can drive can contribute to their alliance’s success. Great strategy can often counterbalance exceptional single robot performance. So how do we win with what we have? Quite frankly we’re happy to have been able to produce a robot at all with all the snow outages…

[tangent] What I particularly like about 148’s design is the potential ability to score 3 in autonomous and 2 in the end game. I envision eliminations to be defensive struggles with limited scoring, so capitalizing on these “guaranteed” points is vital. I’ve long admired 217’s and 1114’s (among others) ability to integrate robot design with overall game strategy to maximize the probability of winning.[\tangent]

Eventually I’m sure I’ll move into “inspired”. Particularly when teams like 148 are there to help us by providing white papers, robot design, experience, insight, etc.