UNgracious UNprofessionalism

[jmiller48167]

After reading through to rules for the umpteenth time , I could NOT find anything talking about the relationship of mentor vs student design or manufacture. So I will give my opinion.

This program is about building relationship WITH sponsors, mentors, and students. It is to help students work WITH the professionals not FOR the professional. Professionals can and are both students and mentors. Some students are absolutely capable of teaching adults. I personally have seen students who design and manufacture circles around me and tip my cap to them.

So each team should evaluate their own capabilities and leave others capabilities to them.

[flargen507]

I know for most of you seeing this that you are sick of seeing this name tag come up, but I hope you are a bit happier by the end. First, I would like to apologize to the entire FIRST Community for what I said yesterday. I want you all to know that I am doing this of my own accord, and it has nothing to do with any affiliation with 159. To that end, I will no longer be using my Chief Delphi account in any manner, so you will not have to worry about seeing something like this from me again. I think it is to the point of this post and the original thread topic that during a very long and stressful competition, people can forget what they are doing and say stupid things. I hope you all realize that this stupidity on my part was entirely mine, and had nothing to do with 159. Again I am sorry, but I hope someday we can see past this and the goal of FIRST to bring people together may be fully realized.

[Gregor]

Originally Posted by flargen507

I know for most of you seeing this that you are sick of seeing this name tag come up, but I hope you are a bit happier by the end. First, I would like to apologize to the entire FIRST Community for what I said yesterday. I want you all to know that I am doing this of my own accord, and it has nothing to do with any affiliation with 159. To that end, I will no longer be using my Chief Delphi account in any manner, so you will not have to worry about seeing something like this from me again. I think it is to the point of this post and the original thread topic that during a very long and stressful competition, people can forget what they are doing and say stupid things. I hope you all realize that this stupidity on my part was entirely mine, and had nothing to do with 159. Again I am sorry, but I hope someday we can see past this and the goal of FIRST to bring people together may be fully realized.

You live and you learn, don't leave Chief Delphi because of this. You'll figure it out.

[Andrew Schreiber]

Originally Posted by flargen507

I know for most of you seeing this that you are sick of seeing this name tag come up, but I hope you are a bit happier by the end. First, I would like to apologize to the entire FIRST Community for what I said yesterday. I want you all to know that I am doing this of my own accord, and it has nothing to do with any affiliation with 159. To that end, I will no longer be using my Chief Delphi account in any manner, so you will not have to worry about seeing something like this from me again. I think it is to the point of this post and the original thread topic that during a very long and stressful competition, people can forget what they are doing and say stupid things. I hope you all realize that this stupidity on my part was entirely mine, and had nothing to do with 159. Again I am sorry, but I hope someday we can see past this and the goal of FIRST to bring people together may be fully realized.

CD is a great place to open your mouth and put your foot in it. We all do it... frequently. It's up to the community to let us know when we're doing that (cuz some of us are really used to the taste of shoe...).

I know I wasn't angry at your posts. I disagreed on a very emotional level with them, but I was not angry at you. Your posts showed a frustration at something. That's understandable, FIRST is stressful. Heck, it's even admirable.

Looking out for your students is important. But so is doing it in the right way. You were taking wrong actions for the right reasons. So, kudos for your heart being in the right place...

Lurk a little, observe, ask some questions. This is a community and our job is to help each other be better as students, mentors, and as people.

[Zebra_Fact_Man]

Everyone screws up every now and then.

[Ian Curtis]

I think the first 70 posts of this oldie-but-goodie "Dealing with disapointments [sic]" are worth reading. (gets off topic after that)

Originally Posted by Madison

Don't lie to your students. Your robot lost because the other teams WERE better than you and your team's work wasn't good enough. Full stop.

This is my outlook on life too. At the same time, I think it is important in how you phrase it. Disappointment can come in many different forms. For some teams, not winning a regional is the disappointment. For other teams, being a quarterfinalist is the disappointment. For some, not making the big dance is the disappointment, and for some having their robot barely move is the disappointment!

For the teams that miss out on the regional win, "We weren't good enough" is likely a great motivator. For the teams that struggled to move, that's probably rubbing salt in an open wound, and your gang of teenagers may be seconds away from giving you a death glare normally reserved for their parents.

For 1778, last year the kids were in the "struggled to move" bucket, and that is no fun for anyone. This year, we were in the "disappointed to miss the big dance" bucket but the team made huge strides. We put a working robot in the bag for the first time in living memory, and had scored more points 7 seconds into autonomous mode of our first match than we had the entire preceding season! Attached is the graph I made of our progress by CCWM (extrapolation is never dangerous )

We weren't good enough. You never can be. But I'm very excited about next year, and you can bet we'll be better.

Originally Posted by Vince Lombardi

The dictionary is the only place that success comes before work. Hard work is the price we must pay for success. I think you can accomplish anything if you're willing to pay the price.

The magic trick is figuring out how to motivate people to do the hard work before success comes knocking.

[Akash Rastogi]

Originally Posted by Ian Curtis

I think the first 70 posts of this oldie-but-goodie "Dealing with disapointments [sic]" are worth reading. (gets off topic after that)

Oh hey look at this noob!

Real talk - I learned a ton from the responses in that thread. Notice that I was just a student on 11 back then and read the post I made in this thread.

You learn a lot about how to respond and deal with disappointment if you just leave yourself open to learning from others. I tend to no longer make judgements on other teams and I tend to avoid making assumptions about those who do better than me, it is just not productive. Learning to reach out and asking for help is probably the best way to grow as leader.

[Woolly]

Originally Posted by Ian Curtis

I think the first 70 posts of this oldie-but-goodie "Dealing with disapointments [sic]" are worth reading. (gets off topic after that)



This is my outlook on life too. At the same time, I think it is important in how you phrase it. Disappointment can come in many different forms. For some teams, not winning a regional is the disappointment. For other teams, being a quarterfinalist is the disappointment. For some, not making the big dance is the disappointment, and for some having their robot barely move is the disappointment!

For the teams that miss out on the regional win, "We weren't good enough" is likely a great motivator. For the teams that struggled to move, that's probably rubbing salt in an open wound, and your gang of teenagers may be seconds away from giving you a death glare normally reserved for their parents.

For 1778, last year the kids were in the "struggled to move" bucket, and that is no fun for anyone. This year, we were in the "disappointed to miss the big dance" bucket but the team made huge strides. We put a working robot in the bag for the first time in living memory, and had scored more points 7 seconds into autonomous mode of our first match than we had the entire preceding season! Attached is the graph I made of our progress by CCWM (extrapolation is never dangerous )

We weren't good enough. You never can be. But I'm very excited about next year, and you can bet we'll be better.



The magic trick is figuring out how to motivate people to do the hard work before success comes knocking.

Right, and that doesn't just go for teams who have never had success, it also applies for veteran teams who have had a "slump" for a few years.

Team 1806 has had it's share of off years (Granted, it's a good thing when you can call years in the 70+ percentile of robot performance a slump), and it's taken the utmost dedication of our mentors and students to pull ourselves out of it. Adversity and failure needs to become a challenge to better yourself for the future, not an excuse to continue to have issues.

As a team from a small town in Missouri that doesn't (yet) have access to CNC Mills, 3-D Printers, Water Jets, etc. we can honestly say that you don't have to be the team who has NASA-designed, powder-coated robots to be competitive in FRC. You just need a group of motivated, intelligent people who can make great design choices and then execute on that design with the resources available to them.

Also, fun fact: The protective lexan lattice on our 2013 robot is actually recycled from the hopper on our 2009 robot.

[Jeffy]

Originally Posted by Woolly

Also, fun fact: The protective lexan lattice on our 2013 robot is actually recycled from the hopper on our 2009 robot.

That explains the extreme success. 1806 was the most underrated bot in 2009 and made my top 10.


The bots that are created by 1806 are always bots that I could see myself possessing the skills to create and can be much more inspiring (especially to students) as compared to even more "elite" teams.



note: While 1806's success speaks for itself, I still want to say this isn't an attempt to belittle it at all.

[Woolly]

Originally Posted by Jeffy

That explains the extreme success. 1806 was the most underrated bot in 2009 and made my top 10.


The bots that are created by 1806 are always bots that I could see myself possessing the skills to create and can be much more inspiring (especially to students) as compared to even more "elite" teams.



note: While 1806's success speaks for itself, I still want to say this isn't an attempt to belittle it at all.

Why would that belittle our success? I may be a programmer, but I'd say a sign of good engineering is when your peers take one look at what you've made and say "Why didn't we do that?!".

[Cody Burd]

this video is what i was discussing about. about one minute in we were forced out and then our robot died on the field.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g3AXM...yQz SWZoiaBrK

[rsegrest]

Originally Posted by bEdhEd

I have been watching a plethora of YouTube videos lately that are showcase and reveal videos that are posted by many teams at the end of build season. There are videos of good robots, not so good robots, and some absolutely incredible robots! The topic I want to discuss is the amount of ungracious and unprofessional comments left by some FIRST participants accusing these incredibly hard working and productive teams of having robots that are mostly built by corporate sponsors, or robots that are barely built by students. These comments are extremely negative, uninspiring, and most of all, ignorant. When I look at a team with a well built, beautiful robot, like Team 254 or Team 118 (Winners of SVR 2013 by the way, congrats!) I can only be inspired at how they are doing FIRST right!

The reason I say that these type of teams are doing FIRST right, is because they work with sponsors and engineers so much that it is an integral part of how their team is run. What is interesting as well is how these high performance teams usually have a huge number of students, and they are being accused that their students don't do enough or even anything, which is highly illogical. I'd hate to say that FRC teams that work within their high school which lack a decent amount of engineer mentors who work in the industry and are forced to make robots that are completely student built (Team 701 is guilty of that) are not doing FIRST right, but they really aren't. FIRST was originally started so students were not limited to the resources of their schools or parents. They are ideally supposed to be teams that are formed with students who may be from different schools who work with an industry partner and can work in that partner's facilities and use that partner's resources. I find it a huge issue that some people in FIRST now think that this type of partnership is "cheating," "unfair," or "too easy." I want these people to know that this type of attitude is not in the spirit of FIRST, and is completely ignorant, because what they consider "cheating" is how an FRC team should work. Team 701 has been running for 13 years now without the industry resources such as engineer mentors or large amounts of expensive professional machinery, and by seeing these high performance teams I wish we could do FIRST right.

This year, some FIRST participants have assumed that our 2013 robot isn't made by students because of how well built and aesthetically pleasing it is, when it actually is 100% built by our students, aside from powder coating, which isn't actually part of the building. The only thing our few mentors actually do is supervise, teach, and give advice. I get how stupid these kinds of comments can actually be now. I actually find it a compliment that a 100% student built robot can be mistaken for an industry built robot. A 100% student built robot is a great thing, but it certainly isn't something to brag about.

The whole point is, that I want all FIRST participants to understand that it is normal and should be praised that a team can work with an industry partner to construct a phenomenal robot, and if they aren't working with industries, they haven't done FIRST right just yet. They should feel inspired by high performance teams to do better, rather than being envious and making ignorant and incorrect statements. I think that a team of students can fully take advantage of the FIRST experience if they do work with industries. I wish my team did that, and I know that if Team 701 did, and if more teams did as well, we would have more exciting and competitive events, and students that are even more inspired and passionate than they are already.

Ok, let me give you a bit of my story...I am the founder of my team. I am the sole coach and over the years we have ranged between 0 engineers and this year we finally had 3. The first year I participated in FIRST my team attended a regional where we were invited to replace a robot in the finals. We were a rookie team who had no idea what Lock-tite was and if that tells you anything then you know how rickety our robot probably was. In talking to a student from the alliance that invited us to join them one of my drivers was told, "Don't worry about it. When we get to Championships our engineers will fix it for you." My team was highly offended as they took great pride in what they had accomplished. The following year when we returned to regionals we walked passed the pit of that same team and saw six engineers inside the pit fixing their robot while 25 students lined the edges of the pit never crossing a toe over the line or picking up a tool. I think this is where most of the animosity of which you speak comes from to be quite honest.

In the years since that time I have come to respect all FIRST teams equally no matter what they bring to competition. We all dedicate obscene amounts of sweat, blood, tears, and time to what we do. As a lone coach it has taken me 6 years to get my foot in the door at a top engineering facility in my town (i.e. they have huge corporate sponsorship of FIRST but the local plant manager was unwilling to meet with me until now). But doggone it we are finally in the door and had their mentorship this year. The other big firm in my town came on board last year and again through hard work of dedicated people we are now a fixture at their corporation this year.

What I have realized over the past six years is that in the end it does not matter who works on the bots (it does but it doesn't if you get my meaning). What matters is what you can learn not just from your mentors but from other teams as well to make your team better. This year when the Robotnauts released their video (which we hotly anticipated ) several of my new students tried to fuss and say, 'That's not fair, there is no way we can win!'. My response was, 'First of all if you cannot respect and admire the work of engineering art that their robot represents you are on the wrong team. Second, it is an honor and a privlege to compete with teams of that caliber. What you ought to be seeing is what you can learn from them to make us better.' These are my true feelings on the matter.

I believe that the attitude of the team starts with the mentors. If the mentors encourage UNgracious professionalism that is what the students will give them. If the mentors encourage gracious professionalism and accept nothing less that is what they will get from the team. As far as CD or YouTube we cannot control what our students or mentors say; however, through anonymous posts we can tell who truly 'gets it' and who doesn't. If you are stating your true feelings then be 'man' enough to say it with your name tacked to it. Support your feelings with facts and logic not emotion and temper tantrum throwing. There are things I would absolutely like to see changed within FIRST and I have sent my thoughts to FIRST HQ. What they do with them is their decision. I am only one team coach and they are trying to work with 2000+ other coaches who are just as passionate and dedicated as I am. They will never be able to make everyone happy but no organization ever will.

OP, I guess the short story is that I completely agree with you. Please remember, it starts with the expectations of the mentors and how firm they will hold their team to those standards. Having been a student and now a mentor you offer a unique perspective that the students will appreciate and emmulate. As long as you remember that you can't go wrong.

[Doug G]

Ok... time for me to throw in my $0.02

Originally Posted by bEdhEd

Team 701 has been running for 13 years now without the industry resources such as engineer mentors or large amounts of expensive professional machinery, and by seeing these high performance teams I wish we could do FIRST right.

I have to disagree a little bit with you here...

1) 701 has a dedicated software engineer who comes 2-4 times a week to work with the team (Duane Murphy has been doing this for 9 years). Just because he is not contributing to the manufacturing of the robot, his insights and industry experience guide a lot of our team's decisions. Which is the point, right? Students learning first hand from a professional engineer how to solve a unique problem.

2) This year we had Kevin Mueller (engineering analyst for UTAS) come back to the team he help start and guided the students through the design issues with our "arm shooter". It was a great experience and worked amazingly well. (two blue banners next to me...)

3) We have large amounts of expensive machinery... at least compared to 90% of the FRC teams out there. We have 2 CNC mills, 1 CNC router, 1 Mill, 1 Lathe, Metal Chop saw, Band Saw, Sander, and had 2 Miller TIG welders this Build Season. So they aren't found in a sponsors shop, but because they are here at school, the team gets to work with them almost daily. That enable us to fabricate parts within hours instead days.

"Doing FIRST right" as bEdhE describes is not a single recipe that can be prescribed to every team. But every team can strive to achieve FIRST goals, seek out engineering mentorship, work hard, and change our community and culture.

Originally Posted by flargen507

I know for most of you seeing this that you are sick of seeing this name tag come up, but I hope you are a bit happier by the end. First, I would like to apologize to the entire FIRST Community for what I said yesterday. I want you all to know that I am doing this of my own accord, and it has nothing to do with any affiliation with 159. To that end, I will no longer be using my Chief Delphi account in any manner, so you will not have to worry about seeing something like this from me again. I think it is to the point of this post and the original thread topic that during a very long and stressful competition, people can forget what they are doing and say stupid things. I hope you all realize that this stupidity on my part was entirely mine, and had nothing to do with 159. Again I am sorry, but I hope someday we can see past this and the goal of FIRST to bring people together may be fully realized.

I'd like to thank flargen507 for his honesty and appreciate his desire to help motivate / uplift his team's spirit. The past weekend at Colorado had a lot of mixed feeling for me personally. We had just come off of winning the SAC regional and winning EI as well. Our first ever Blue Banner. We worked really hard to get to the #1 spot at Colorado, almost going undefeated (see pic below of drive team students planning strategy at our hotel). However, some of this success was tainted by comments I heard from other teams about our presence there and small items (bottle caps and mini frisbees) thrown at us from the stands. I heard a mentor from another team make a comment about what is like to compete against the CheesyPoofs and how unfair it is that they have a NASA engineered robot. A statement that clearly shows a lack of understanding, but what many unfortunately think.

I can't emphasize enough to everyone, talk to these teams that do what you cannot!! Find out how they got there. You will be surprised and inspired more often than not.

In 2002, our team was so amazed by team 60 (Kingman, AZ), we couldn't believe it was built by students. Then in 2003, several of my students hung out with them at the LA regional and were quite surprised by how they designed such amazing robots. Similar thoughts can be made about 254. But after you get to know them, you will find out that they are an amazing team and an amazing organization of really hard working mentors, parents, and students. The size of their organization still boggles my mind and each time I get to spend with them, I learn something new.

Yes, this seems like an inevitable thread each year, but remember, CD users are sometimes newbies. Thanks bEdhE for getting us all fired up!

[Steven Sigley]

Probably doesnt need to be said but our team didn't get to where we are this year overnight. we have gradually improved over many years and it's been a pleasure to watch this transformation. To aspiring teams who have yet to find great success. take pride in what you have and try and improve each year.

[mman1506]

Equipment doesn't make a team. Our team is probably the best equipped team in Canada if not the all of First. We have in our school 5 CNC mills, 2 CNC lathes, CNC plasma cutter, 10 mills, 12 lathes,6 foot sheet metal tools, 2 industrial robotic arms with a spot welder attachment and a full welding shop with a number of migs and tigs.

Yet at our last regional we came in dead last. We have been in massive slump since 06 when we made the championships but we are slowly pulling out of it.

edit: BTW we are setting up days next year where other teams can come and use our equipment