Sippin' on the haterade

[Ben Martin]

Originally Posted by IndySam

We heard a few comments this weekend about our robot but we heard many many more compliments from people and I am proud to say that no team refused to cooperate with us.

I know that 234 has had to put up with this for a long at Boiler time because of their success and quality products they produce. I'm sorry to say that back in the day even I made comments. But I took the time to learn about their team and came to realize that it was hard work and organization that made them good. We came to the realization that we needed to work to emulate them and raise ourselves to their level and like most of the top teams Cyber Blue is always more than willing to extend a hand and help lift you up.

In the heat of competitions teams can get frustrated and even angry, it's just natural. It's times like those when its time for us to step up and teach.

As an alumni, I appreciate this. Much of 234's direct awards-level success at the Championship was directly spearheaded by students. I remember putting countless hours into the 2008 Inventor Award entry, and the same was done by the design team in 2010.

When I came to Purdue to mentor another team, I began to realize the value of having a unified team driven toward producing a quality product for all facets of the program. 234 does a very good job of inspiring students to succeed in everything they do. I truly enjoy mentoring 1747, but I constantly look back to the team I came from for inspiration of how to improve how we mentor our students, as accepting nothing less than success in what you do in high school can encourage that same paradigm in college and beyond.

When I see the top teams perform at competitions, I cannot honestly believe that any of them would be a totally mentor-produced operation. As a student, I would find that so amazingly boring. We have given our students lectures and classes about robotics topics, and they have told us flat out that the best thing we can do is keep everything hands-on and everyone involved. I find it very hard to believe that mentors on a top team would be so insensitive as to not allow students to do any technical work for the robot. I am very encouraged and inspired when I read on CD about students and mentors working collaboratively together to produce working products and sponsoring companies being so impressed by the students that they hire them as interns while they are still in high school.