Terrible Volunteer Experience

[Carolyn_Grace]

Thank you for making this thread. I think that it's important to address and for all volunteers to think about.

I had a bad experience with one of the volunteers that I worked with all weekend at Champs (I handled the situation by talking to the Volunteer Coordinator, so I'm not going to go into details here), and it stemmed a lot of thought about WHY we volunteer and the overall role of a volunteer. It also got me thinking about how we need to train our volunteers, especially at big events like the World Championship and the State Championship.

My first reason for volunteering: I wanted to have fun. I volunteered on field reset at Champs because I wanted to be near the action and work with a few of my close friends, hence: fun.

My second reason (and the reason that I think most people miss): I wanted to make the experience of the World Championship Event the best possible experience for the students, mentors and teams. My job on field reset was pretty easy: open and close the gate, set up balls, tape the field, watch matches...but I tried to do this with a smile on my face. I tried to wish the teams good luck as they walked off the field, and get the students smiling by joking around with them as I handed them balls for their robots. My goal was for the students to be able to relax for just a second before they had to focus on the stress of driving and representing their team.

Unfortunately, like Adam pointed out, sometimes volunteers are more concerned with their assigned job, as if they've been given a mission that they have to complete no matter what.

I.E. the safety glasses person who was told to not allow team members to get glasses, and the field supervisor who is too concerned with his schedule so he shouts at students to hurry up, when they're just trying to enjoy their very first moment on the floor of the dome.

So how do we fix this: well, we probably can't. Each volunteer needs to learn how to manage the stress on their own, and the Key Volunteers need to do a good job monitoring their minions (easier said than done: I know, I was the VC for MSC). It's up to volunteers to also monitor each other. If someone seems stressed or out-of-line, then they should talk to someone about it. Like other people have pointed out: volunteer coordinators are a good place to go.

To add: my general experience at the Championship was that the volunteers were awesome. I met some pretty cool cats on the Archimedes field and really enjoyed laughing and dancing around with them. I also loved getting to meet people from other teams, like the drivers and coaches. It was extremely rewarding and inspiring.