What we dread the most- 'Why didn't I GO!!!'

[Joe Matt]

Since we can't and will never be able to bring everyone to out-of-town events, we have had to cope with the whinny people who say things like this. I know we all have our feelings about people like this, but I was wondering how you deal with it.

Any thoughs?

[Katie Reynolds]

I'm assuming you're talking about people who don't get to go to the competitions, right?

I think it all depends on how you choose who gets to go. On our team, we all agreed at the beginning of the year that the advisors on the team would get to choose who goes to what competition. Generally, we take everyone to regionals (Chicago only being three hours south of here) but limit Nationals to 20 students. These 20 students are chosen by the advisors based on their contributions to the team throughout the entire season - not just the build. This helps narrow down who gets to go (i.e. if they had to choose between two people that worked the same amount of time during the build, but one of them helped out cleaning during the summer, helped set up Lego League tournaments, etc. the one who contributed more to the team would be going over the one who didn't do quite as much). That's just how we work.

We don't really have a problem with people complaining whether or not they are going to competitions. People pretty much know if they are going to competitions or not. If there is a student who feels that he or she deserves to go to the competitions but isn't on the list they are free to talk to the advisors and "plead their case". But ultimately it is up to the advisors to choose.

- Katie

[sprchal]

At least this year it wasn't very hard to decide who went on our team. I'm pretty sure everyone who came to work over the weekends got to go to the regional. Anyways, we're a small team, so over half of us actually get to go (We had 19 out of about 30 go to the competition). I have no idea how some of the larger teams choose, I mean, some of the teams at UCF had at least 30 people...

[Frank(Aflak)]

We have about 10 people on our team, and maybe two ore three real engineer advisors above and beyond that. Should we ever have the money to travel, who goes will not be as big of an issue as who skips it.

[Matt McNelley]

Well, this year we get to take all of the team members to all of our competitions, which our advisor tells me is a first for us. So this year, everyone goes!