Quitting FRC for Vex?

[GreyingJay]

Originally Posted by jman4747

As an exercise, what are some specific reasons why you would want to keep your FRC program? Why do you do FRC given the alternatives?

To answer this question I will refer back to the quote I took from Fusion_Clint:

Originally Posted by Fusion_Clint

Or an FRC Team can take that same money and inspire at least that many students, but allow students to work in areas they are interested in with mentors from that career field, such as Video, Web Design, CAD, CAM, Machining, Welding, Journalism, Rapid Prototyping, Public Speaking, etc.

and this one:

Originally Posted by gblake

We agreed that he/they would be giving up on the flashy circus side of FRC tournaments (unless he took his students as spectators). His thoughts about that were that he was more than willing to live with the reduced flashiness of a typical, local VRC tournament, if what he got in exchange was being able to look across the fields and pits, and see all of his students driving or working on robots, instead of sitting in the stands watching a handful of their classmates doing that.

The programs give different experiences to the students. I heard someone once say that "FRC is not about robotics. FRC is a life experience that involves robotics". And when I look back on what FRC is doing for the students I work with, I think that "learning to build/program robots" is actually pretty low on the list. Our students are learning more about how to outreach and connect with the community, how to work on teams, how to work on imbalanced teams, how to work under pressure, how to communicate an idea, how to manage their time, how large projects are structured and how each person fits into that. It's much more like how the real world operates.