Lesson Learned 2016 - The Negative

[jtrv]

Originally Posted by Chris is me

At one of our district events, FRC judges came in and asked our team, a few dozen times, in a few different ways, who built the robot. Before entering our pit, I happened to overhear that they were trying to figure out "who the mentor built robots are". The questions they asked my team were "gotcha" questions, all phrasing essentially the same question in different ways until the kids referred to a sponsor or mentor as having helped with some portion of the robot, at which point the judges would harp on that point. I believe these were the culture judges, not the technical judges, and they simply would not ask about anything other than different ways to phrase the question "did your mentors build and program the robot". We were not asked about our STEM outreach, our business plan, our team spirit, and ultimately I can't help but fear we were disqualified from those awards at that district because our kids' answers to the "mentor built" questions didn't pass the judges' standards.

Oh man. This is real.

When I was a student, as Chris knows, I spent a lot of time in the pits. However, I was a programmer who did only programming (and driving in 2015). I knew nothing about the details of how it worked mechanically - only a basic overview, e.g. this did this and that did that. If something broke, I was not the one who knew how to fix it or why it broke, unless it was quite obvious. I was constantly nervous that I would get asked a question about the mechanical details of the robot and that I wouldn't be able to answer it well enough, and thus hurting my team's chances at any awards. Thankfully, I was often busy during judge visits with code, but this worry was a very real thing for my first couple of years on the team, and I am absolutely sure that I was/am not alone in that.