Weekly Schedule

[Brandon Zalinsky]

About 35-40 hours per week for our most dedicated members, which is most of the team. We aim to be done by the weekend of ship day, but for the past few years, we've had wrenches on the robot as it goes into the bag.

[Donut]

Originally Posted by DampRobot

Are we the only team that works on Sundays?

Some schools won't allow Sunday meetings on school grounds. This was the policy of my old team's school, the few seasons we needed a Sunday to finish things up we had to take everything to a mentor's house and work in their garage. Many members can't make Sundays regardless for religious reasons.

Our schedule is 5-6 to 9 Tuesday and Thursday, 9-10 to 4 Saturday. We're meeting this first Sunday to help with strategy and will add a day or two extra in weeks 5 and 6 as needed to finish things up.

In high school I used to go 6 days a week for 25+ hours and 40+ the last week, doing homework before the meetings started. As a mentor now I can't do that schedule and can see why adults in FIRST get burned out from it.

[IndySam]

We meet Mon-Thur 6-9, we add Saturdays 9-3 week two or three and add Sunday afternoons week four of five.

We try to have the practice robot driving and almost complete by end of week four and start building the competition robot week five using what we learned constructing the practice bot to make improvements.

After ship it's practice practice practice.

[Siri]

January: 6-9 MWR, 10-6 Sat-Sun/holidays. February: 6-9 Mon-Fri, 10-9 Sat-Sun/holidays.

Our average students do ~10-20hrs/week (2-4 nights and at least 1/2 day weekend), picking up towards the end (20-25h). The more dedicated student leaders might do 30h sometimes. Lead mentors hit 400 hours in last build season (60+hr/wk*), with top programmers and CADers in between. In truth, I wish we could start weeknight meetings earlier -- 5-6hrs/night was much more useful, 3hr has some diminishing returns.


*We don't intend to do this again...

[wireties]

FIRST Team 1296 meets Mon-Fri for 4+ hours and Saturday for 10 hours - so 30 hours. We try to take Sunday off so people can catch up with family and homework. We add 2 full Monday workdays to that if school is out. If the schedule looks good we might skip a Friday evening or two.

The important thing is to front load your efforts, set miletones and meet them. Like many opinions in this thread we try to have a rolling base in week 2 and a fully assembled bot in week 4. Then weeks 5 and 6 are never ending iterations of practice, tweaking and autonomous mode work.

Good luck

[lpickett]

It does help that the parents and mentors help to provide meals and we have a kitchenette that allows the students to have food and drink available. They will eat together around 5, usually discussing issues that have come up. Then they have snacks available for later or for afterschool while they are working on homework. Homework has to be done before working on the robot. There has been some late nights in the past. We hope to keep this down, but doesn't always work. Everyone have a fun time in the weeks ahead and try to get some sleep in.

[Alan Anderson]

The TechnoKats season schedule evolved a few years ago into one that works well for us. We have 2-hour afternoon and evening work sessions on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays; a three-hour work session Friday evening; and a six-hour day on Saturdays (with lunch provided by parent volunteers). Our regular weekly team meeting is on Tuesdays, and that fits between between the work sessions during build season. Sundays and Mondays are typically days off, though we try to make sure the shop is open on the two Monday holidays during build.

Late nights and extra days often happen as the stop build deadline nears.

There's a bus immediately after school to take students to the workshop (it's a little more than a mile away) Tuesday through Thursday. We have two tables in the shop labeled specifically for homework. Grades take priority over robot work.

[DonRotolo]

You can see our detailed Calendar at www.team1676.com

The short version is 20 hours some weeks, 30 hours other weeks. This tends to increase in weeks 5 and 6.

We like to have out practice bot running in week 4. Doesn't always work out that way though.

[Mr. Van]

Wow! I'm amazed at some of these replies.

Many schools require a certified teacher to be at any and all events/activities where there are students present. As a Teacher/Coach, I can't possibly imagine adding 40 hours of additional time to my work week. How do teams work starting at 12:00 noon? Isn't that during school? Anyway, here is our schedule:

M, W, Th 2:20 - 6:00 PM (Robotics is the last class of the day, and we extend to after school.)

Sat 9 AM - 5 PM with an hour lunch break (that most of us work through).

Both stop times are somewhat flexible (we may add an hour or perhaps two on certain days). We also meet throughout the three-day weekend before "bag & tag". We do not meet on school holidays (like MLK day).

It is about 18 - 20 hours per week.


REMEMBER - there ARE things more important than robots...

Have a great Kickoff!

- Mr. Van
Coach, Robodox

[Botwoon]

Originally Posted by Mr. Van

REMEMBER - there ARE things more important than robots...

false

[IndySam]

Originally Posted by Mr. Van

REMEMBER - there ARE things more important than robots...

- Mr. Van
Coach, Robodox