Homework V.S Robotics

[Akash Rastogi]

[Edited per Andrew's request]

On the subject of the OP, AP classes are easier to manage once you develop a study strategy and schedule for them. There's certain ways and sources to study from for AP so it's really not too difficult to balance it with robotics. Bring work with you to robotics, let your robotics teachers/mentors know what work you have to complete and time you need. Do AP homework in school if you get time. Biggest help that we have on our robotics team is that we have robotics classes for all 4 grades, so any student in robotics classes is generally allowed to use the Robotics Engineering class period to do their homework. Senior year, a bunch of us had double block Honors Robotics, so this time added up and helped us do our work. If you concentrate, and your teachers are aware of the whole 6 weeks of robotics commitment (MORT's main teacher emails our teachers of all events/build season), you should be doing somewhere around 2.5-4 hours max of homework a night- also depends heavily on the teachers and school mentality towards robotics team.

[math311]

No mentors at the moment. I may have stated that in a way that could be embarrassing to our team, but the bigger thing is we simply have no idea how to handle it.

[Andrew Schreiber]

Originally Posted by Akash Rastogi

I think instead of insulting and embarrassing your team, you should try to bring these problems into light and discuss it with your mentors.

Just to clarify, that would NOT be on CD.

This isn't the place for it and it isn't the place for outright insults to team members. I'm all for being honest but there are a lot of awfully nasty things said in the fourth post of this thread and I would recommend that the poster edit/remove it. (Also Akash, if you would mind unquoting it so that the OP can delete some of it?)

[math311]

Sorry for brutal honesty, but i'll get rid of it. Thanks

[WizenedEE]

My suggestion is to never do homework when you're extremely tired. In my experience, you don't actually get it done and you're still losing on sleep. Just set your alarm early and drift off -- you'll end up getting more sleep total, since you'll have the slight panic factor of "oh I have to get this done by 7:30", you'll be more awake to do it, and (bonus) you'll be more awake for classes.

[math311]

Thanks.
Sorry for the complaining and whining. What I posted earlier was uncalled for, based off of being tired, stressed and trying to figure out the final part of the marketing robots electronics layout using our old IFI gear. I'm not passing blame off to those things, but acknowledging that I posted somehting misguided and self destructing, with those thoughts helping to drive my words. I accept that I posted that, and apologize to my team and to you.

[Cuog]

My junior year of HS was pretty rough. I don't remember my course load(I don't remember much from that year honestly). I managed with 4 hours of sleep a night for a few months including build season and surrounding.

Some of the pitfalls: I was sick a lot. I'm usually sick once a year if that, that year I was sick four or five times. This was not only caused by lack of sleep, but also helped make it worse. My classwork suffered, and my team involvement suffered.

There are two things you can really do. First is to manage your time, decide exactly how much time you have for each task you need to do. This includes sleep. Sleep time isn't decided by whatever is left over after everything else is done. Budget 6-8 hours for it. If you're exhausted move up bedtime and wake up earlier. I've found that waking up 2 hours earlier is easier and more productive than trying to stay up just a half hour later than when your body begins demanding sleep. Second know where to cut. If 24hrs aren't enough to get everything done for the day its time to start taking things off the to-do list. Maybe leave the robotics meeting an hour early to get HW done if you have a heavy load that day, or skip it altogether. I don't know how your team is, but I have a hard time telling students they should be focusing on FIRST at the detriment of their studies. It doesn't help to inspire students towards STEM, then shoot them in the foot accidentally by disallowing appropriate homework time.

Also as tempting as it is to start drinking energy drinks, mountain dew, caffeine etc. stay away from that stuff as much as you can. It helps in the short term, but over the course of a semester or build season, it all starts to catch up with you.