The 6 Week Build Season and 'Mentor Burnout'

[Don Wright]

Originally Posted by Madison

Are folks advocating an extended build season (e.g. 9 weeks) or the elimination of a stop-build deadline altogether?

If the latter, what would you recommend to minimize the advantage a team competing late in the season has over someone who, perhaps necessarily, competes in week 1? Would you attempt to minimize the advantage at all?

We meet 3 times a week during build; twice during the work week and on Saturdays. Later in the season, we meet more frequently as required. I'm pretty well ready to die after 6 weeks now; I can see how making the time allowed longer could help, but I also see where it wouldn't make much difference and the pain would only be prolonged.

My opinion...get rid of it altogether...

What advantage does a team competing in week 5 have over a team competing in week 1? All the teams competing in week 1 compete with other teams competing in week 1...and then 2, 3, etc...

Are you saying that a team in week 5 will wait until the week 1 districts/regionals and then copy the best designs?

Wow...I feel like EricH today...I think this is the most I've ever posted in one day...

[Tristan Lall]

Originally Posted by Don Wright

Are you saying that a team in week 5 will wait until the week 1 districts/regionals and then copy the best designs?

Wasn't it 469 that used to have a reputation (c. 2005?) for making big changes at their first event? If so, were those changes independent of what happened in week 1?

[Don Wright]

Originally Posted by Tristan Lall

Wasn't it 469 that used to have a reputation (c. 2005?) for making big changes at their first event? If so, were those changes independent of what happened in week 1?

Granted 2005 was before my time with 469... Do we make changes? Yes. Are they sometimes big? Yes. Do they sometimes resemble other good designs (like 1114's arm in 2007 because ours sucked)? Very occasionally. But most of the time the changes were because we weren't really done at our first event... In fact the running joke/motto on the team was "We'll just finish it on Thursday at our first event..."

In 2008 we wanted to "shoot the ball" but thought it would be deemed illegal. After we won Detroit and saw 27's awesome robot and how much fun and cool it was, we spent the next day ripping our arm off our practice bot to make a kicker...because it was sooooo cool to score that way. The students wanted to put in the time. The mentors did too. So we did.

I think that was the last season of "big changes" other than minibot deployer in 2011...again...233 found such a cool way to launch those suckers...

[sgreco]

Originally Posted by nuggetsyl

Even if a team coppied a design, the real question would be did they learn something? Reverse engineering is not always that simple.

It's possible to do this now even with the with-holding allowance. You don't need to take your robot home in order to do it. In 2011, my old team (2079) built an elevator that didn't run smoothly and we had trouble calibrating it. We took the 35 pound with-holding allowance (I think it was 35) and built a completely new 4-bar linkage manipulator lightly based off of the design from 148 that we were heavily inspired by (our linkage used box tubing, but the dynamics of the system were similar). I still question myself as to whether this was the right thing to do, but we learned a lot along the way, and it made our competitive season more successful.

Long story short, even if you can't take your robot home, it's still possible to make drastic iterations that can be influenced by successes of other teams.

[Brian Selle]

For our team, the "stop build" day was last Saturday. We basically work 100% until we are eliminated. Having to build and maintain a practice robot costs us 2x and increases our workload by a significant amount. At each competition there is a massive push and stress to update the bagged robot to the current state. How nice would it be to show up to the competition and be ready to go?

There are teams that stop building at 6-weeks and their mentors get a break. I get it and respect it. However, without a stop build day your season can still be 6 weeks long... just go to a week 1 event and your done (maybe FIRST could even move it up a week). Right now, if you go to a week 5 event you will be competing against teams that have worked for 11 weeks... the stop build day accomplished nothing.

For our team, removing the 6-week stop build day would not "extend" the build season at all... rather it would reduce cost and mentor burnout.

[josmee443]

The 6 week cap definitely puts a great deal of pressure on teams, since it is such a short amount of time to build a great, efficient working robot. But, I think it is helpful in some ways. It teaches members that there are certain deadlines, whether they are short or long, that must be met. And, this is quite true in real life. Essentially, I think it teaches us to make a well organized, balanced schedule to plan out how to go about building a good robot. Really, in a way, it sorts out the teams that are really dedicated to doing well during competition. Typically, the best teams are the ones with the best planning. Ultimately, it prepares us to deal with the sometimes ludicrous deadlines that are sent our way in college, and after college.

[Irwin772]

I disagree with eliminating the six week build season, the only thing I could see happening is that addition of an additional week. The whole idea of having six weeks is to prepare the students for life and real world applications, where there are strict deadlines that must be met.

I also suffer from burnout towards the end of the season both as a student and a mentor this past year. I can't even count the amount of hours I've spent on robotics in high school and university but getting rid of the time limit to build the robot removes on of the learning points that FIRST created. The students need to learn to meet deadlines, even in high school.

To prove that it should not be problem to build the robot and test before the end of the six weeks take into account that us Canadian teams have to deal with exams during week 3 or 4 depending on the year, which makes all of us lose at least 4 days of build season. Even with this barrier Canada has been able to produce 2 world champions and some of the biggest powerhouse teams in FIRST.

[Cory]

Originally Posted by Irwin772

Even with this barrier Canada has been able to produce 2 world champions and some of the biggest powerhouse teams in FIRST.

Do you think they stopped working after 6 weeks?

[dcarr]

Originally Posted by Irwin772

To prove that it should not be problem to build the robot and test before the end of the six weeks take into account that us Canadian teams have to deal with exams during week 3 or 4 depending on the year, which makes all of us lose at least 4 days of build season. Even with this barrier Canada has been able to produce 2 world champions and some of the biggest powerhouse teams in FIRST.

FYI - Canadians aren't the only ones having to deal with exams during the build season. Our school, and perhaps many others, have finals in week 2 which is pretty damaging to the schedule, basically knocks out a full week for many of the students.

[sanddrag]

I dislike the fact that because there are really no limits on working after stop build day, we invest thousands of dollars and hundreds of hours to build an identical practice robot, when we could much more easily (but not currently 'legally') have only one robot and no bag. We are spending all this time and money to because we are required to put a few mils of plastic between ourselves and something we can just make two of and continue development on. In that sense, the bagging is absurd. But, it does have it's benefits, as indicated by numerous others previously.

Anyhow, consider this mentor burnt to a crisp. FRC is becoming a competition of which team has more experienced people who can sideline the greatest percentages of their lives for the greatest amount of time. It's a battle of who can sacrifice the most, and it's not healthy. It's tough to keep up.

I wouldn't mind seeing something imposed that said "FRC teams may only meet a maximum of 6 days per week, and may elect which day per week they choose as their non-work day. On the non-work day, team members may not design, fabricate, assemble, procure, or program any piece of the robot, or take part in any activities directly related to FIRST Robotics." Of course it's not enforceable, and teams would find a way to bend the rule, but it would be nice to go home for even just one day per week. Come to think of it, this isn't really any less enforceable than bagging, which is honor system anyhow. FIRST HQ, I haven't wished much of you, but for 2014, my wish is to make us go home once in a while. Thoughts?

[dcarr]

Originally Posted by sanddrag

I dislike the fact that because there are really no limits on working after stop build day, we invest thousands of dollars and hundreds of hours to build an identical practice robot, when we could much more easily (but not currently 'legally') have only one robot and no bag. We are spending all this time and money to because we are required to put a few mils of plastic between ourselves and something we can just make two of and continue development on.

[AllenGregoryIV]

Originally Posted by sanddrag

I wouldn't mind seeing something imposed that said "FRC teams may only meet a maximum of 6 days per week, and may elect which day per week they choose as their non-work day. On the non-work day, team members may not design, fabricate, assemble, procure, or program any piece of the robot, or take part in any activities directly related to FIRST Robotics." Of course it's not enforceable, and teams would find a way to bend the rule, but it would be nice to go home for even just one day per week. Come to think of it, this isn't really any less enforceable than bagging, which is honor system anyhow. FIRST HQ, I haven't wished much of you, but for 2014, my wish is to make us go home once in a while. Thoughts?

I agree with most of your post until this part. Coming from a team with only one mentor (myself) meeting more is one of the ways we stay competitive. None of my students are at every meeting. They all know they can take breaks but if FRC instituted that rule it would be difficult for us to remain competitive with teams that have 10 mentors. We don't always build 7 days a week, we have outreach stuff during build season that we do as well. Either way FRC shouldn't regulate meeting hours just like they don't regulate mentor or student involvement in the build process. The more FRC gets out of the way and let teams build the program that is right for the them the better.

[Mark Sheridan]

Originally Posted by sanddrag

Anyhow, consider this mentor burnt to a crisp. FRC is becoming a competition of which team has more experienced people who can sideline the greatest percentages of their lives for the greatest amount of time. It's a battle of who can sacrifice the most, and it's not healthy. It's tough to keep up.

Also to add to this point there is only so much you can give up before you got to throw in the towel. I found myself extremely busy at work, long hours in december and January. I found myself burnt out before the season began. So I had to greatly scale back my contributions. Next year, I am thinking I am going to limit myself to just transmissions, strategy and a little bit of pneumatics. I think its the only way to keep sane.

This year to avoid burning out our lead CAD mentor, we were able to raise from one active CAD project to running 3 projects in parallel this year. I hope we can make it 5 next year. We have a lot students getting good at CAD, they just need to learn some more tolerancing and design for manufacturing. With all these different projects, we have to be very carful to not to encroach another space on the robot and to stay within our weight limits.

I hope we can keep on distributing our work to get as many students involved.

[Rich Kressly]

Depends on the prevailing philosophy and corresponding goals.

IMHO:

If you want the best robots and teams to get better on the field and are cool with asking those teams that want to be on-field competitive to start giving up other/more activities in their lives (mentors and students alike), then lengthen build, open up withholding allowance, etc.

If you want as many teams to participate in FRC as possible, keep the six weeks, get rid of the withholding allowance, and after stop build there is no robot work except at events.

I think we all agree mentor burnout is real. Potential mentor fear (no way I'm joining that FRC team, do you know their commitment?) is also an issue.

Again, it all depends upon what you want, but after many years mentoring/coaching in many programs (robots and otherwise) it would seem to me you can't have it both ways, though.

-Rich

[Adam Freeman]

Originally Posted by Rich Kressly

If you want the best robots and teams to get better on the field and are cool with asking those teams that want to be on-field competitive to start giving up other/more activities in their lives (mentors and students alike), then lengthen build, open up withholding allowance, etc.

There seems to be two major, very different opinions, on if opening up the deadline will or will not increase the amount of time/effort/dedication required to be competitive.

*Along with some other relevant, but less prevalent issues.

- Mentors against, state that with more time will lead to an increase in committment to fill that time and thus lead to more burn-out.

- Mentors for, state that teams are already working through the deadline, and that opening it up will actually relieve pressure caused by having to bag the competition robot.

We can't really know what FRC teams would or would not do based on this hypothetical situation. But, there are other "open season" robotics competition out there that are relatively comparable to FRC. Aren't both FTC and VEX, open season competitions? What happens in these types of competitions? Are the mentors burned out? Are they filling every hour of every day working on their machines? Are these even comparable to FRC mentors and robots?