The 6 Week Build Season and 'Mentor Burnout'

[rick.oliver]

I have read every post in this thread and have already posted. Nothing I have read compels me to change my perspective. My first preference is to eliminate the bag and tag requirement; provide teams with a voucher which they may choose to use to ship their robot to and from the championship on a date of their choosing.

To the question of what would 4028 do differently under the circumstance I described? As I am the lead mentor, not the dictator, I will share what I would strongly advise our team to do. Our work schedule would not change in the first 6.5 weeks – we have not proven we can get it completely done in 6.5 weeks, so until we demonstrate we are more efficient, no schedule change. We would continue to select two events from the same Regional events which are relatively close and we would work around any major school events. We would avoid back-to-back events and likely target weeks two through six; ideally three and five. We would continue to build prototype subsystems and more effectively assemble them to ensure that they work together as designed. We would complete our design, fully test, debug and practice. If I can find the resource close, I would pursue the idea of getting pre-inspected.

Net, we would come to our first event complete, practiced and ready to inspect. I know from experience that when a team can do that, the competition is better and everybody has a much better time.

To the comments concerning the value of the 6.5 week deadline and its representation of real world requirements. I have been an engineer in the chemical process industry for 35 years. I understand that deadlines and commitments are real and students need to learn how to meet them. I also know that some deadlines are hard and fast while others are soft and may be renegotiated at times. For the past 23 years I have worked for a consumer product company. I have designed manufacturing processes for new-to-the-world products; redesigned manufacturing processes for major reformulations of products; modified existing process subsystems to work more effectively and remove “issues”. Here is one thing I know for sure – we can never stop innovating or we will be buried by the competition. Sure, we push hard and keep schedules to get the product out as fast as possible. Then we continually improve the product and the manufacturing process to provide new and better benefits and lower costs. This is my reality and this is what I want to help our students experience. We will do it under the current rules; we could do it more cost effectively without the bag requirement.

Concerning the relative competitiveness. I want no parts of constraining anybody from executing an excellent design to near perfection. I want to see highly effective machines fully playing the game compete on Einstein every year. If we could be one of them, great … I am not going to kill myself trying or lose any sleep when we don’t make it. I will celebrate the success of those who win and learn from them.

Concerning burnout. I get exhausted by the end of build (is that burned out, perhaps). But I recover quickly. Without the bag requirement, I know that the stress and frustration of not being complete would be at best eliminated and at worst postponed. Certainly no worse. The stress at competition would depend upon performance and reliability. I believe we would be more reliable and perform better. We would meet more during the build season as needed, but I believe under less stress and more effectively with access to the competition robot.

Finally, to those who express the concern about burnout, I will offer the following wisdom which has been shared with me over the years. The first is live your life based on priorities, balance is a trap and invites you to always compromise. It makes you feel like you are cheating one of your priorities. Another is to ensure that you manage your time such that you have margin (time which is unscheduled so that you may respond to the emergencies and opportunities in life). The last one I learned recently, limit yourself to five roles. These are my five roles in priority order:
1. Disciple of Jesus Christ
2. Husband
3. Father/Grandfather
4. Engineer at Procter & Gamble
5. Lead Mentor of FIRST FRC Team 4028

[mathking]

For those arguing that extending the build season will make the disparity between the most well funded and least well funded teams smaller, I have to ask "Are you really sure about that?" Yes, being able to make a practice robot is an immense advantage, but is it more of an advantage than being able to attend multiple regional competitions? Will being able to attend more regional competition be an even bigger advantage with the unlimited build season?

My team just completed our 11th season. I would call us a moderately well funded team. We have built a practice robot the past couple years, but this was the first year where we built a fully functional one. (Thank you Denso for the grant!) But before that we were able to build most of a practice robot with the accumulation of spare parts from years of doing FRC. This year was the first in which we could afford to attend a second regional competition. It was an eye opening experience. We had a pretty good robot by the end of the build season, but multiple little issues kept it from really performing well until the elimination rounds at Queen City. But this year we were able to take our now fully functional robot to Buckeye. The advantage of the teams that routinely go to two or three regional competitions will be magnified by an unlimited build season.

I guess my view on this question comes down to asking "Which choice will provide the most benefit?" I know that for my team at least (and I strongly suspect for other teams) the extension of build into the spring will push away more students due to other season commitments than we will gain by spreading out the time commitment. And I feel strongly that an unlimited build cycle will pose an existential threat to more than a few teams who rely on teacher participation. So I think there is a not inconsiderable risk of there being fewer students and fewer teams in FRC if we switch to an unlimited build season.

[AllenGregoryIV]

Originally Posted by mathking

For those arguing that extending the build season will make the disparity between the most well funded and least well funded teams smaller, I have to ask "Are you really sure about that?" Yes, being able to make a practice robot is an immense advantage, but is it more of an advantage than being able to attend multiple regional competitions? Will being able to attend more regional competition be an even bigger advantage with the unlimited build season?

My argument is that you won't need to go to multiple events to gain the same advantage. If instead you spend Saturday at a nearby school with your competition robot competing against another team, you can gain a similar advantage to a team that is at an event that week.

118 hosts small scrimmage type things from time to time and those are some of the best days we have during all of build season to learn about our robot. Only teams with practice bots can go though.

[waialua359]

Originally Posted by Bob Steele

I can certainly confess to this Glenn, It has gotten so bad that the parents have actually assigned someone to make sure that I eat.
It is simply in my nature to be competitive and to give my students 100% of my effort.

It isn't so much about the winning... it is about the competing.

I can tell you that the key to having more balance in the mentor/coaches lives is to create a really good parent/mentor/coaching system by giving everyone something of value to do and to celebrate that.

I don't think switching a few hours/days/regulations here or there or forcing change on the FIRST system will do anything to reduce the "mentor burnout". It will always be there no matter how much time is allowed. Of course it might help individuals one way or the other... but it is not a real solution to this "problem"

Our team has been blessed with a wonderful group of mentors and parents...it allows us to do things that other teams have difficulty doing. If everyone gets the same amount of time... teams that have this kind of support are going to do better. It is really that simple.

Invest your off season time... gain support from somewhere...find people who want to volunteer... make them part of your team... Time spent doing this will solve so many problems that you have..

What you are doing is incredibly interesting and it has great value.. and its a great deal of fun for mentors and students alike... let it shine... make it loud... reap the benefits... How many times have you heard
" I wish they had a program like this when I was in school..."
Well NOW they can be in this program....

Don't just say " Our team has no mentors.... we can't find any more"...go out and tell people about your team... you will find supporters... once you have a few... getting more will be easier and easier...

The one thing you can't do is just sit back and wait for them to appear.
Or expect someone else to do it for you.

Make it happen...

sorry for the soap box... You may now return to your scheduled broadcasting...

Bob,
I couldnt have said it any better. Spot on!

The real work as you have mentioned is finding the right mix of mentors/volunteers/supporters for your team, and NOT trying to do it all by yourself........because "its just too much work to find help."

[MooreteP]

Like most of you, I have been watching this thread closely, as my addiction to this program has affected my personal life.

1998, Ladder Logic, Rutgers "regional", with my newly formed Team 195, I began to cry seeing three of my passions, engineering, education, and sports, altogether under one roof. I was hooked.

Back in the day, we put the Robot in a crate, and it was laded in between competitions, at great expense.

To reduce monetary costs, the program has evolved to "bag and tag", with multiple regionals and "withholding allowances". This is bad for an addict.

Three teams later, I have to keep reminding myself: "It's not about the Robot".

[pfreivald]

Originally Posted by Pat Fairbank

This argument reminds me of what Karthik is fond of saying, though -- that you can increase your relative competitiveness either by raising your own team up, or by dragging the best teams down.

I don't see why it should in any way remind you of that quote. FIRST already has a great deal of rules--that is, artificial restrictions--designed to create some level of parity. I'm all for money and motor and pneumatic limits, too... and I don't see how that makes me in any manner anti-Kanagasabapathian.

I want FIRST to grow; to expand to other schools and communities with sustained, awesome programs where kids do awesome things. The three major barriers I see to that are (a) mentor burnout, (b) brave little toasters (which, let's face it, aren't terribly inspiring to those who built them or to anyone watching them), and (c) money.

(a) and (c) are both impacted by extending build--(c) is definitely helped, while (a) is definitely hurt (I know, I know, people are free to disagree with me on that and be wrong ).

What I do not see as a major problem in FIRST right now is the top-tier and high-middle-tier teams fielding non-competitive robots.

[Cory]

Originally Posted by pfreivald

I don't see why it should in any way remind you of that quote. FIRST already has a great deal of rules--that is, artificial restrictions--designed to create some level of parity. I'm all for money and motor and pneumatic limits, too... and I don't see how that makes me in any manner anti-Kanagasabapathian.

I want FIRST to grow; to expand to other schools and communities with sustained, awesome programs where kids do awesome things. The three major barriers I see to that are (a) mentor burnout, (b) brave little toasters (which, let's face it, aren't terribly inspiring to those who built them or to anyone watching them), and (c) money.

(a) and (c) are both impacted by extending build--(c) is definitely helped, while (a) is definitely hurt (I know, I know, people are free to disagree with me on that and be wrong ).

What I do not see as a major problem in FIRST right now is the top-tier and high-middle-tier teams fielding non-competitive robots.

If FIRST got rid of the witholding allowance, as many in this thread seem to favor, you would absolutely see the ceiling come down.

We definitely would not have designed a 30 point climber if we knew there was no witholding allowance. We made substantial changes to the functionality of every system on the robot post build. Very few of those changes could have been done at the event with no witholding allowance.

I imagine many others would have designed different robots with less functionality as well. It may not be about the robot, but it's definitely inspiring seeing the robots that manage to do everything well, or be the absolute best at a few things. With less chances to tweak/upgrade/fix things, a lot of that goes away.

[Bongle]

Originally Posted by Cory

If FIRST got rid of the witholding allowance, as many in this thread seem to favor, you would absolutely see the ceiling come down.

We definitely would not have designed a 30 point climber if we knew there was no witholding allowance. We made substantial changes to the functionality of every system on the robot post build. Very few of those changes could have been done at the event with no witholding allowance.

I imagine many others would have designed different robots with less functionality as well. It may not be about the robot, but it's definitely inspiring seeing the robots that manage to do everything well, or be the absolute best at a few things. With less chances to tweak/upgrade/fix things, a lot of that goes away.

...so? All of a sudden, a two-level climb would be the amazing thing at the regional. The amazingness of a 30pt climb isn't simply because it is a 30pt climb, it's because it was very rare and very difficult to pull off under the current build-season ruleset. Shorten the season, and something slightly less amazing would become the amazing thing that'd get people off their feet (and, of course, the 1-2 teams that managed a 30pt climb in a 6-week strict build would be even more amazing).

If they extended the build season, you'd see more 30pt climbers, which would reduce the specialness of a 30pt climb, and then the inspiring thing would be someone doing it in like 4 seconds.

Of course, if they limited the build season or extended it, I'm sure the GDC would change the game rules slightly to make things a little easier or a little harder, and so the "most amazing" thing you could do on the field would still only be doable by 3-4% of teams.

I'm lost in the comparison. Isn't the argument that tool/sponsor limits affect top teams because such teams take advantage of them currently? If so, isn't that the exact same case with the withholding allowance? It removes the exact same potential time from all teams, just like limiting tools remove the exact same tool options from all teams. Could you explain further?

I'd also like to point out that pulling the top down is not inherently relative to competitiveness. It could well be absolute: what if no one (ok, fewer, some miracle workers didn't need the extra time/allowance) had pulled off a 7 disc auto? Or a 12 second climb? It might not cut the competitiveness, but it cuts the inspiration. What if Einstein had looked more like Week 1?

I believe the withholding allowance is used by far more mid-tier teams than the other things I listed. Particularly in the context of whiny CD threads, that are always like "111/1114/254/987/25's ROBOT IS BUILT WITH SUPER-TOOLS BY ADULTS AT THEIR SPONSOR-DONATED METAL SHOP CAMPUS. BAN EVERYTHING THEY USE SO MY TEAM IS CLOSER". I've been on teams that always did pretty poorly with just one mentor and still used the withholding allowance and the added time that came with it. The withholding allowance is nowhere near being something only elite teams use. And in any case, unlike tons of money, big sponsors, or amazing tools which are harder to acquire, it is something that is available to every team equally. Removing it thus removes the same opportunities from every team equally.

As for the inspirationalness of 12-second climbs, see what I said above. There isn't anything inherent in a 30pt climb that makes it amazing, it's the fact that only a few percent of teams managed to pull it off. In a shorter build with somewhat-less-capable robots, whatever other thing that was only pulled off by 5% of teams would become the inspirational/aspirational things for teams to chase. If we gave every team a year, a 30pt climb would be an expected feature and wouldn't be inspirational at all.

[Cory]

[quote=Bongle;1275017]...so? All of a sudden, a two-level climb would be the amazing thing at the regional. The amazingness of a 30pt climb isn't simply because it is a 30pt climb, it's because it was very rare and very difficult to pull off under the current build-season ruleset. Shorten the season, and something slightly less amazing would become the amazing thing that'd get people off their feet (and, of course, the 1-2 teams that managed a 30pt climb in a 6-week strict build would be even more amazing).

If they extended the build season, you'd see more 30pt climbers, which would reduce the specialness of a 30pt climb, and then the inspiring thing would be someone doing it in like 4 seconds.[/QOUTE]

I disagree. 20 point climbing is the same thing as 30 point climbing, from a climber design standpoint. 30 point climbing just repeats the first motion. We would not have 20 point climbed either. I think very, very few teams would have 30 point climbed if they knew they absolutely had to get it right the first go around. I can't speak for 1114, but if I were them and were deciding between floor pickup and 30 point climbing I'd probably pick floor pickup because there's far less risk of not having it perfected in six weeks.

It was so hard to do that I don't think you would have seen many teams adding one. You could certainly scrap everything above your base and make a 30 point climber, if you had an open competition, but it would be very, very difficult to retrofit one around your existing design. Maybe some more teams would have built one, but there'd still be no more than a handful that would be worth the time they took to align and get to the top.

Regardless, it's one small section of the point I was trying to make. If the best robots aren't as good and do less things in a less impressive fashion, it hurts all of FIRST because students on other teams aren't as inspired by the amazing things the really good teams are able to do.

[Taylor]

Perhaps it's the lack of parity that makes the uberbots so compelling.
If we all had unlimited time and budget to design and build robots, we'd all have designs that score 15 discs autonomously from the top of the pyramid.
But we don't, so the teams that can do that are few, far between, and a-m-a-z-i-n-g.
The 6-week restriction is a big part of what makes FRC great, what makes it different. Using "we can't do it because we didn't have enough time" isn't a valid excuse - we've all got the same amount of time.
Also - the notion of teams arbitrarily self-limiting their schedules in a longer build season paradigm is laughable. We're engineers, scientists, teachers. We don't do things that are arbitrary. We do whatever it takes to try to be the best at accomplishing our goals.

[Cory]

Originally Posted by Taylor

Perhaps it's the parity that makes the uberbots so compelling.
If we all had unlimited time and budget to design and build robots, we'd all have designs that score 15 discs autonomously from the top of the pyramid.
But we don't, so the teams that can do that are few, far between, and a-m-a-z-i-n-g.

Surely you don't believe this is true?

The great teams are pretty close to the upper limit on performance. They can't get that much better. Maybe 5-10%.

The pretty good teams can probably get a lot better. Most of them probably not quite to the level of the great teams, due to resources, mentors, design skill, etc, but pretty close.

40% of teams have no hope of ever getting anywhere near the great (or even pretty good) teams, IMO. The best hope would be that if you make build an open process the teams in the first two categories could have the ability (through more time) to help those "lower tier" teams to at least build functional robots that could meet some minimum standard of competitiveness.

[Kimmeh]

I'm not going to comment on what we should do with the withholding allowance or if we should keep the 6.5 weeks or not. I think there's a bigger problem.

I'm not trying to pick on either one of you, you're just the two most recent posts saying this.

Originally Posted by waialua359

During any event, I ignore the lunch and dinner schedules. All that matters is when our next match is!

Sounds bad, but this is reality.

Originally Posted by Bob Steele

I can certainly confess to this Glenn, It has gotten so bad that the parents have actually assigned someone to make sure that I eat.
It is simply in my nature to be competitive and to give my students 100% of my effort.

This is part of your problem.

I'm reasonably confidant that any mentor worth his/her salt would NOT let a student do that. We make sure our students eat, that they're drinking lots water, that we send them home at a reasonable hour, and that (if we're in a hotel) we make sure to send them to their rooms at a time that allows them to get a decent amount of sleep. (Whether or not they sleep at that point is out of our hands.) Why don't we do the same for ourselves? Just like your students, your body cannot give you 100% if you're not taking care of it. And that includes doing trivial things like eating. Even if all you're doing is taking five minutes to inhale a sandwich or slice or two of pizza and chug a bottle of water.

Part of the reason why so many people get burned out is because they're not taking care of their body. You need to eat, you need to stay hydrated, and you need to sleep. To take it a step further, sit down for a moment or two every hour. Take some of the strain off your feet and back. Spending all day running around on concrete/wood floors does NOTHING to help you feel better.

[Taylor]

Originally Posted by Cory

Surely you don't believe this is true?

The great teams are pretty close to the upper limit on performance. They can't get that much better. Maybe 5-10%.

The pretty good teams can probably get a lot better. Most of them probably not quite to the level of the great teams, due to resources, mentors, design skill, etc, but pretty close.

40% of teams have no hope of ever getting anywhere near the great (or even pretty good) teams, IMO.

You said what I said. My question, poorly phrased, was "why is that inherently bad?"
I, for one, have added admiration for the greats because they were able to do so much in so little time. That separation, that parity, is what makes them incredible.
We're historically firmly entrenched in that 40%. We're graduating students, getting them scholarships, hooking them up with internships and work experiences, spreading the Gospel According to Dean, slowly but surely getting better as a team - I'm okay with being in the 40%. What I'm not okay with is making myself (more) exhausted, straining my relationships with my family, friends, career, and ask others on the team to do the same - just to maybe get to the bottom part of the 60%.
Our competitive limitations are not a direct result of the 6-week period. They're a result of a larger set of issues - ones we're working toward resolving.

[Jared Russell]

Originally Posted by Taylor

Also - the notion of teams arbitrarily self-limiting their schedules in a longer build season paradigm is laughable.

Please go back and read the posts from Joe Barry (987) and Adam Freeman (67) in this thread. They are among many teams that already have self-imposed time off on their build calendars. On 341 we generally avoid meeting on Wednesdays and Sundays, at least until a final push is necessary. We have learned over the years that a bunch of fatigued and stressed out team members working around the clock is not the preferred way to build a robot, regardless of what your team's capabilities are.

[Brandon Holley]

Originally Posted by Taylor

I, for one, have added admiration for the greats because they were able to do so much in so little time. That separation, that parity, is what makes them incredible.

I don't want to speak for the 'greats' but MANY of these teams are not accomplishing their amazing designs in 6.5 weeks. What Cory was describing earlier is that these very elite teams are already near the peak of robot performance. These teams are working for 4 months, using withholding allowance and practice bots to reach an unbelievable level of play.

Opening the build season will not dramatically change the level of play these teams are already achieving...

-Brando