Mythical Six Week Build Season

[Amanda Morrison]

I need some break in the spring to work on my senior design project, so I want there to still be a limit.

By this point families want their members that they loaned to the team back. College work needs to be caught up. Yards and houses that have been ignored need worked on. Prepping for classes and other jobs needs to be done. Winding down and catching up on sleep is a health problem that needs to be addressed. I also miss being home enough to cook some meals.

I hate stop build because it's an obstacle when working with my team, but I love it because it saves me from myself

...most people on our team(students, teachers and mentors alike) are about ready for a break by stop build day, so we enforce it as a hard deadline.

For the 2 years I've been in FRC, I've always pushed the envelope as regards time management: it's difficult for me to maintain the grades that I require of myself

I wanted to point these out as this theme continues in this thread. How many of us are holding FIRST's competition structure responsible for our own lack of time management/self restraint during build season?

So asks one very, very guilty party, herself. I didn't quote those to single anyone out - I am rarely one to find an adequate life balance when I have a goal in mind. Competition structure amplifies this. How many people want to show up to the table completely outclassed? I am reading that we are concerned with our individual 'me' times, but what I think we're really saying are these points:

- To stay competitive, we'd have to completely revamp the comfortable and expected structure & schedule we've had in place for our team, especially where our own personal limitations/boundaries have been set. This may mean someone else may have to help pick up the slack when leading the team or the build.

- To do what's best for our teams with this new deadline, we'd have to determine if our current competition strategy changes in any way based on the resource levels of our team and the competitions available to us, and decide what would work best for us/in our region (e.g., "Early or late regional?", "Regional location"?). We already do this to a point, but our first year of this new competition structure would be a big question.

- It is a relative unknown how my team will react to having the extra time. I do know what needs to be accomplished in six weeks. I don't necessarily know what we can create in 8, 10, 12 weeks, or how to schedule that, limit that, budget that. It's an unknown, well, because we haven't done it before.

I have mixed feelings, and it brings up a lot of questions for me.

Why is design convergence bad? What are the students learning that they would not learn otherwise?
Why is the deadline of my first competition date (which is known before build season) any different than the existing, somewhat-by-choice deadline of stop build day?
How does day 1 of competitions change without teams seeing a different robot on CD and then working like crazy to change/needing to refine their bagged robot?
How would my team change their overall meeting schedule for a late regional? An early one?

All of these could be a thread on their own. What I have realized from the fact-based points brought up in this thread, and did not previously consider, is that FIRST would have to seriously think through how this would affect teams that must ship to their events due to location, and if that disadvantage is severe.

Most other assumptions here are in fact speculations made without any real data, so I'm weighing those as personal viewpoint without factual analysis.

I don't know if lower-resource teams will have a tougher time, or find it easier to have a more competitive robot. Even if not as competitive as the top tier.
I don't know the percentage of teams that already build a second robot or at least a partial build. I was surprised by Collin's post.
I don't know if higher-resource teams will spread out the work, or continue to work at a six week schedule with bonus for driver training.
I don't know how the challenge of the game will change any of this. Minibot year vs. endless recycling vs. FIRST Frenzy with many tasks.
I don't know if more teams will experience burnout, or if it may relieve burnout with the added burden of finding someone else to help.

I have been on teams on both extreme ends of the spectrum - from extremely successful seasons to one-and-done regionals where we came in last or nearly last with a completely non-functioning robot. I'm still pondering how this schedule would have changed those teams, but the above questions are still kicking around in my brain. I think my next step is an old-fashioned pros and cons list.