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Unread 08-04-2010, 17:56
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Molten Molten is offline
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Re: Frustrations with Minor Technicalities

Quote:
Originally Posted by Andrew Schreiber View Post
Normally I am all for the "In The Real World" comments. In this particular case I have to disagree. FRC should emulate the real world but not be exact. Remember, our job is to inspire. I know that one of the most frustrating things to me is when some minor technicality means that my hard work is null and void. The single most irritating thing ever to happen to me at work was when a customer said, "We decided we don't want this anymore" after the last 2 months of my life had been dedicated to it. Yeah we got paid for the work but it hurt me personally because of all the effort I had put into something that would never get used. (That was a year ago and it has never been used) Do we really want to show our students that side of engineering? IMHO that can't be too inspiring. Imagine if we couldn't have fixed these seemingly insignificant issues. How would our students have felt if their hard work had been sat on a shelf never to be used again?

Not saying the rules are wrong or that teams should be allowed to compete with illegal robots but merely remarking on something bouncing around inside my head.
Yeah, it can be disappointing if somehow you can't compete. But let me give you a story of mine from FIRST. It was my rookie year. I was the rules "expert" for my team. In short, I was the only one on my team to read them because we thought that was enough. I knew everything about "the game" section. I basically ignored the rest because it was "minor details". Turns out that you can only use certain motors, who knew?(I fully took the blame that year and for good reason) We used some motors straight off a pitching machine and it worked great. We got to Boilermaker and it was shooting good for the most of Thursday. We got through some sort of inspection(I wasn't there) that day. Friday morning several veteran team leaders were coming over with the inspectors to point out or mistake. We were devastated. We couldn't switch motors because of the way it was set up. It just wasn't possible. However, one of the teachers had an idea and we switched from a shooter to a dumper. It took several matches. We had 10 kids in the pit working on the robot. Yes, it was crowded...but they were all working together. We knew what needed done and did it. The dumper worked lousy, but it worked. We scored maybe 2 points the entire season. Honestly, thats not really what mattered to me. Seeing the robot on the field isn't my fond memory. It is seeing a pit FULL of kids working together towards one goal. It was rather touching and immensely inspirational. We had a rather dysfunctional team that year and I honestly didn't like most of the other kids that well. But when the chips were down, we endured as mankind has endured. Just a moment that I'll always remember. My best memory from robotics possibly. And it wouldn't have happened if not for a particular mentor pointing out what the inspector missed. Thanks anonymous mentor.

I guess I'm just saying that overcoming hardship is the most inspirational thing I've seen. Yes, if you can't overcome it...that is disappointing. But with all the help available to the teams from the inspectors and other teams, I'm sure any team can overcome. Even if they have to start from scratch. Wasn't there a team that built one from scratch this year even?

Perhaps we'll have to agree to disagree on this one.
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