Why it is sometimes hard to be a student on CD.

[cadandcookies]

Originally Posted by EricLeifermann

I think part of the issue is that students these days are so connected to the internet and social media that they over post. They come in all excited and saturate CD with a lot of useless posts and questions that could be found with a proper search.

I'm pretty sure this has been something that people have complained about on CD for a long time. It isn't limited to "kids these days." There's probably some interesting psychology stuff going on that I don't have the expertise to comment on.

Originally Posted by Nathan Streeter

I think many of "us motivated, mature mentors that embrace FIRST values" still often react with our feelings, play favorites, and are defensive about some/many things... not to mention the many adults in FIRST that don't necessarily embrace FIRST values and have the maturity you'd hope! I think, yes, we like to think we're highly empirical... but from my experience, many people claiming to be highly empirical and fact-driven are actually highly emotional and defensive.

Yup. Technical people love to think we're being objective all or most of the time, but we're just as susceptible to pointless "holy wars" as anyone else.

Real life example: You know those clothespins people pin to each other at competition? I hate them. Specifically I hate it when I'm in a conversation and no less than three separate people pin me. Is it a logical response to get angry at this? Not really. They're just pins. Still, I got worked up about this enough that I actually raised my voice to tell a student to stop it. Not really one of my finer moments, but for the rest of the tournament I just kept any of the pins people put on me on my hat, and moved on with my life, because it's entirely pointless to worry about some pieces of wood when my drive team needs to talk to our partners next match. I could think up a half dozen reasons to validate my frustration, but at the end of the day, they would just make me feel better at myself and put me further out of touch. Sometimes it's worth reconsidering why you're frustrated and either moving on or changing your tactics.