The negative effects of FRC

[jijiglobe]

I would like to preface this post by making it abundantly clear that the FRC program has a net positive impact on the lives of its participants, as well as the community as a whole. I do, however, believe that this topic doesn't get talked about enough, and merits more discussion.


2016 was my last year in the FRC program, and I've been thinking a lot about the huge impact that it has had on my life. While it has had a huge positive impact on my life, I also think that there are many places in which the experience could be improved. This post might come off as rambling because I have a lot of thoughts on the topic.

This year I was the President of Engineering for team 694, which came with a massive amount of responsibility. Our team's places a huge priority on student work, trying to avoid the pitfalls of mentor help. Of course we have mentors, and we need them to help ensure the success of the team, but we do our best to keep them to a purely educational role, only putting their hands on the robot to assist a student, or to demonstrate a technique. The upsides to this system are obvious: students get to learn more, and get a more hands-on experience throughout the build process. The downsides are that this system places a huge burden on the students, particularly the leaders. To give an example of the amount of work that students on this team do, our CAD team does the entire robot CAD during a CAD marathon the second weekend after kickoff. This year CAD marathon lasted 36 hours with a 2 hour break after hour 20.

My experience as president was hugely stressful, and left me in a position where I had to stop and ask myself if it was all worth it. I have to admit that this year, during build season, I wasn't really in a good place emotionally; there were just too many things to worry about, on top of my classwork. On top of all that, my team made it to Einstein this year, which left me with mixed feelings. On the one hand, I'm happy that my team was successful, and that my hard work payed off. On the other hand, I'm worried about the implications of this success. Is it necessary for our leaders to push themselves this hard for our team to be successful?

I'm not the only one that has had negative experiences with FRC either. I have met many students (from my own team, as well as others) that let their grades suffer for their team. In fact, a friend of mine was unable to get into a college, despite being a Deans List winner at worlds. Of course it's not FIRST's fault that these types of situations arise, however I think it is important that they are talked about, and that FIRST does their best to address these problems.

Finally I would like to talk about competitions. Competitions provide an environment that implicitly encourages unhealthy behavior. Competitions start early, and end late. If you account for a healthy breakfast and dinner, this means that students often get 4-6 hours of sleep on competition nights, when they have to go work themselves to the point of exhaustion. Furthermore, at competitions, I have found it hard to allocate time to eat lunch. Lunch breaks (especially on the day of eliminations) tend to be exceedingly short, and that time is often necessary to systems-check the robot, and make repairs. Taking a lunch break, puts you at a competitive disadvantage, and don't even get me started on Einstein. If your team makes it to Einstein, you don't get a lunch break; You need to haul yourself and your pit over to Einstein field to get ready for opening ceremonies. I'm reluctant to say it, but I think FIRST should close pits during lunch, for the sake of ensuring that students eat.

Also... Airplanes aside, some people were throwing legitimately dangerous things onto Einstein (someone threw a large paper shuriken made out of several sheets of paper that narrowly missed someone in our pit crew. From the height it was thrown, it could have easily hurt someone really badly). Can FIRST please do something about the paper airplane situation?

tl;dr:

FIRST places a huge burden on students that can sometimes have negative effects on grades and health. Lunch breaks encourage students to skip meals, and airplanes on Einstein are dangerous

[alicen]

I really only want to touch on this one point since I've been out of the actually being on a team game for a while and haven't been to Champs in about 6 years.

Competitions start early, and end late. If you account for a healthy breakfast and dinner, this means that students often get 4-6 hours of sleep on competition nights, when they have to go work themselves to the point of exhaustion.

I've been a volunteer for a long time, and almost always would arrive with my family about an hour or so before anything is open to the teams. We also left about an hour or so after the teams, depending on how the event went on any given day. If you add the travel time to home/hotels into that, somehow we still manage 6-8 hours of sleep. Yes, a lot of that has to do with having the discipline to go to sleep at 10pm and wake up at 5 or 6am, but a lot of the "I only got 4-6 hours of sleep!!" has more to do with staying up late outside of the event. I was that student back in the day too, I stayed up and exhausted myself over the weekend.

On a different side of the sleep deprivation - it kind of lends itself to the real world. Sometimes you will have projects at work that cause you to work long hours for deadlines and get little sleep for a few days. Then once your deadlines are hit, you go back to a more normal sleep/work schedule.

So in short, I don't see a few days of exhaustion/sleep deprivation/stressful choices as negative. They are opportunities to learn from the experience so that when you arrive in the real world at a job you are more prepared for what gets thrown your way.

[Sperkowsky]

The lunch break thing has really started to irk me particularly when events run late and decide to eliminate a lunch break all together. This should not be the case. If an event runs late have everyone go on later but do not make students not eat.

Eliminations this year at the NYC regional was particularly bad for me. We were not the top 30 teams so they would not let us get reinspected before alliance selections. Instead after we were chosen we had to remove our bumpers (we had reversible bumpers that did not like being removed), get reweighed, and spent 15 minutes with an inspector trying to explain our pneumatics system... We then had to start prepping for elims get our robot fixed up a bit and before we knew it we had to queue. Food isnt allowed in the pits or queue so I had to go without eating.

By the end I started legitimately dizzy and I believe it affected my performance as a driver. I now have a rule to eat before alliance selections but whats going to happen when a kid passes out on the field because they had no time for lunch.

[Alan Anderson]

Almost everything about the original post strikes me as either something that can be handled by the individual, or is part of the specific team culture. I believe it can all be addressed without any changes imposed from outside. None of it (aside from the paper airplanes) seems under control of FIRST itself.

Originally Posted by Sperkowsky

The lunch break thing has really started to irk me particularly when events run late and decide to eliminate a lunch break all together. This should not be the case. If an event runs late have everyone go on later but do not make students not eat.

You don't have to go without food just because the field doesn't shut down for a lunch break. It's common (though not yet customary) for teams to arrange for food to be brought to the pit crew so they don't have to leave the venue.

Eliminations this year at the NYC regional was particularly bad for me. We were not the top 30 teams so they would not let us get reinspected before alliance selections. Instead after we were chosen we had to remove our bumpers (we had reversible bumpers that did not like being removed), get reweighed, and spent 15 minutes with an inspector trying to explain our pneumatics system... We then had to start prepping for elims get our robot fixed up a bit and before we knew it we had to queue.

You were not allowed to be reinspected? That's just wrong. I think you should contact the LRI for that event with your concerns. This is not how re-inspection has been done at any event I have been part of. All teams are pushed to get their robots reinspected after their last match, and the usual procedure is to have them show up at the scale with "bumpers on, battery out."

Food isnt allowed in the pits or queue so I had to go without eating.

I'm sorry you didn't find time to eat, but you already figured out how to make it more of a priority. I also think that keeping the students from running out of fuel should be one of the mentors' responsibilities.

[Jon Stratis]

Originally Posted by Alan Anderson

You were not allowed to be reinspected? That's just wrong. I think you should contact the LRI for that event with your concerns. This is not how re-inspection has been done at any event I have been part of. All teams are pushed to get their robots reinspected after their last match, and the usual procedure is to have them show up at the scale with "bumpers on, battery out."

I agree with Alan on this... Every event I've been to almost all of the teams have passed reinspection before alliance selection. That includes the 60-63 team events in MN, as well as 75-100 team divisions at champs!

The only time I've had teams remove their bumpers during reinspection is when there's an issue. I can do the math to add their bumper weight to the robot weight to know what the scale should be. If that doesn't line up, I can also do the math to subtract the bumper weight to figure out what the robot actually weighs (and I even use a spreadsheet to do all that math for me to make sure I don't make a mistake!). Occasionally the robot is a little overweight and we can't figure out why, in which case I encourage the team to remove their bumpers and try with just the robot, before they start making changes that could cause them problems. Often that fixes it - the team forgot to bring the bolts or pins to the scale when they weighed their bumpers, and that accounts for the extra half pound that put their apparent robot weight over 120.

[jweston]

One of the things our team has been working on is self-care. That means getting adequate sleep, food, and generally giving yourself a break when your stress starts to get too high. It's a lot harder than it sounds.

I don't think its entirely fair to blame individuals, especially students, when they have trouble with self-care under duress. This isn't something that's widely taught in US culture. If anything, we seem to wear it as a badge of honor of how much we can take. Even something as simple as trying to get a good night's sleep can be difficult on an overnight when your brain is buzzing from the day's excitement. It's even more difficult if you're away at a hotel. It may pay off in the long run to have the team learn and practice some self-calming and self-monitoring techniques.

Self-care is one of those places where it's important for mentors to step in. Sometimes this means keeping an eye on the tension level of an individual or the team. Other times it means having plans, including contingency plans, to ensure that all students eat and drink enough water. It's not easy. A little research and planning plus flexbility is key.

The only thing I can think FIRST could work a bit harder on is ensuring matches stay on schedule with some extra time padding, especially in the earliest event weeks. Maybe that means scheduling the first 2-3 week events with a couple extra hours in them. That will probably result in a decrease of the number of teams that can sign up for an event due to match scheduling. This isn't a bad thing if it means everyone makes it through without losing their minds, although it may pose some difficulties for ensuring teams can sign up for regionals or 2 districts events, depending on where they are.

It would also be a boon if the "no outside food" wasn't so prevelant. I know that some teams quite understandably blow this off. I also realize this rule is often imposed by the venue, not FIRST. But it does make it extremely difficult at times to respect the venue's wishes while trying to feed our team, particularly when the venue's food vendors close long before the end of a late-running day.

[marshall]

Is it necessary for our leaders to push themselves this hard for our team to be successful?

I think this is tangentially relevant so I'm going to post this link here to the "Turning the Tide" report/website that Harvard, MIT, and other colleges have worked on:

http://mcc.gse.harvard.edu/collegeadmissions

I do feel like FRC is stressful but I don't think students do themselves any favors by also participating in eleventeen other clubs and programs while simultaneously attempting to edit the yearbook, school newspaper, and help children in Africa... not that OP did that or that those things aren't good but the priority for students should be on long term sustainable impact their communities.

You will find in life that pushing boundaries is hard and you can't push at 125% all year long without sacrificing something... eventually life catches up. I suppose it is part of growing up that students get to learn that. For some the lesson comes easier than others.

[jijiglobe]

Originally Posted by Alan Anderson

Almost everything about the original post strikes me as either something that can be handled by the individual, or is part of the specific team culture. I believe it can all be addressed without any changes imposed from outside. None of it (aside from the paper airplanes) seems under control of FIRST itself.

I would argue that it's both in the interest of FIRST and the ChiefDelphi community to encourage good practices and team culture. FIRST talks about safety culture all the time, knowing full well that team culture without outside influence is not enough to produce the optimal result. Why not do the same with health? Just an idea.

Originally Posted by dradel

As said earlier sometimes you have to push yourself to meet a deadline or whatever, but real world doesn't stop because your a little tired. Biggest difference is mom and dad won't be in your real world job to hold your hand, well that is unless your going to be one of those live in your parents house till your 35 people, but that is a entirely different rant.

Originally Posted by Mike Schreiber

Every sport is tough - so is life.

I agree that real life is tough, but I know someone who won the Dean's List award at Championships, but was unable to get into a single college. He's a smart person and was not under-qualified for these institutions, he just didn't allocate his time well. This is clearly a bad outcome for a student that FIRST has decided to give one of it's most cherished awards to. It's nice to think that teams and mentors will solve these issues by themselves, but that simply isn't the case. A simple thing like FIRST reminding students to pay attention to there academics could go a long way, I mean that's essentially what they do with safety.

I want to be abundantly clear that I am not asking FIRST to make FRC easier! FRC is a challenge, and it's the hardest fun I've ever had, but I am asking FIRST to healthy practices, as well as self-care.

[trezelle2]

Originally Posted by Alan Anderson

Almost everything about the original post strikes me as either something that can be handled by the individual, or is part of the specific team culture.... I also think that keeping the students from running out of fuel should be one of the mentors' responsibilities.

I'd like to add also that this is a great opportunity for alumni of your team, depending on your team culture. Personally, I helped found my team as a senior ('14-'15 school year - Recycle Rush), and, due to our small team, was chosen as both Drive Coach & Team Captain. That put a lot of stress and pressure on me, and I too went without lunch one day, didn't sleep well, etc - not because of lack of support, but because as a rookie team we didn't know what we were getting into in a lot of ways.
This year, I attended college 3 hours away from my high school, but decided to long-distance mentor my team, and that I felt extremely passionate about making sure that students didn't get burned out & had realistic jobs. My main projects during the year were:

• Fall: Define the roles on the team and run them by the other mentors
• December: Present these roles to the team
• Kickoff: Right after Kickoff, I interviewed the students and conferred with mentors to assign roles
• Competition: Support the team leaders

To elaborate, our team was small and we all agreed to have mentors appoint team leads in different areas.
During competitions, as a new mentor, I told our lead mentor that I planned to work closely with the drive team, and that paid off. I walked with them to queue to keep nerves down, especially when our robot had problems. With our very small team, our Drive Coach was also one of our strongest members in the pit, and could have burned himself out; at one point, I pulled our pit mentors aside, and we basically banned the drive team from the pit for around 45 minutes so I could bring them to lunch and not let them rush through or go hungry. We also had to tell the team captain to leave the pit for a little while, because she hadn't let herself take a break either. We had to be more careful with rotating our pit crew, even with only 7 team members.

Parents were also great, arranging dinner plans one day when we mentors were nearly burned out as well, which was really helpful.


I think that in many ways, FIRST attracts perfectionists and those who are likely to develop such laser focus and determination bordering on stubbornness that they forego such things as food and sleep. **(This applies both to students & mentors) Once our team recognized that, we could start taking steps to prevent hunger, tiredness, and burnout.

TL;DR: A college or alum mentor is a great team-wrangler. Watch for perfectionists that may set themselves up for burnout.


**Note: I say this lovingly, and am in no way trying to place blame on the participants. It's something I've learned about myself from experience, and I notice it in members of my own team.

[JamesCH95]

We all must ask ourselves: why are we doing this? No one is twisting your arm, there are no personal negative consequences for pushing hard, or taking it easy, or not doing FRC at all.

I think it's good for students to push hard and learn where their own personal line exists. I think it can be good to cross from time to time as well. Pushing that limit is how we all learn and grow as individuals. Furthermore it is great to experience this level of stress while in HS because you have a family to support you if you crash, and HS is not the end of the world.

Managing stress/eating/sleep is a significant part of any competition, athletic/FRC/auto racing/otherwise. Controlling how your team operates under these conditions plays a reasonable role in your successes. Having enough people familiar with the robot and pit operations to take lunch in shifts is a good idea. Not keeping your drive team at the venue later than needed is another good idea.

Do not ask FRC to make life easier for you. When you go to college, and then launch into real life, there won't be anyone there to make sure you eat lunch or go to bed on time. You will have to be responsible for these aspects of your life. Again, learning this about yourself while you still have the safety net of mentors and family is very good. Much better than screwing up in early adult life where the consequences are greater than in HS.

If FRC were easy we wouldn't get as much out of it as we do and the experience wouldn't be as meaningful as it is. All of these 'soft' challenges (as opposed to the 'hard' techncial challenge of the game/robot) impart very meaningful life lessons that you should take to heart. I would encourage you to not resent the forge of FRC for being as hot as it is, but instead to be proud of the fact that you survived it and came out stronger.

[messer5740]

I was in out in the pits almost the entire time of our competitions, and I still was able to eat. I remember at the Buckeye regional when I figured out who are alliance partners were (Sachem Aftershock and FIRST Responders- thanks guys) I ran to a confession stand that they had opened, bought lunch, and shoved it down in 5 minutes. I didn't talk, I just ate and when I was done I went to strategize with my team. I'm sure teams can spare 5 minutes to eat a quick lunch.

[Jon Stratis]

The stress thing is something students deal with all the time, and it's not just robotics related. Back in the day, my school didn't have a FIRST team, otherwise I would have been on it (they do now though!). Instead, I spent a lot of my time in band. Marching band met for a couple of hours every day after school in the fall, much like my team meets a couple of hours a day during the winter. Jazz band happened for an hour before school started. To say there were days where I was easily one of the last students in the school and the first one there the next morning would not be an exaggeration. Sure, getting all my homework done around that was taxing and a little stressful... but it taught be important time management skills that I wouldn't have learned otherwise.

Frankly, if someone is burning out from being a leader, it's most often because they don't know how to delegate, how to get something moving then step back and let others carry it on. There's nothing wrong with a student leader showing up, getting the meeting going and everyone on task, then moving to the back of the room to do homework. Unfortunately, what often happens is that student leaders feel the need to do everything themselves, be an active part of everything from the moment it starts until the moment it ends, and they end up getting burned out. The hard part is learning how to delegate, how to grow talent to compliment your own so you can step back a little bit and take care of yourself.

The event schedules are not really overly demanding. Thursday pits open at 8:30, close at 8. Friday open at 8, close at 7. Saturday open at 8, close at 6:30. As a key volunteer, I show up an hour before pits open every day, and I don't leave until after all of the teams have - so I'm easily staying in the building longer. Then after ensuring everyone is gone, I get to catch up with my team or meet up with some other volunteers for dinner (or just to hang if dinner was provided at the event that day). Despite all of that, I still get 6-8 hours of sleep every night during an event. Any lack of sleep is self-inflicted, or inflicted by the team, not by the event schedule.

Finding time for lunch is another tough area. You need to be able to delegate, to plan ahead, and if needed shift your schedule a little. Why do you need to be in the pit working on every little thing? Isn't there someone else that can do some work while you get some food? As an LRI, I know a lot of work happens over the lunch hour at most events, and I find it hard to leave the pits knowing that teams may need my help or advise. But I make it work. I ensure there's proper coverage at inspection (a trusted experienced inspector and my inspection manager) and I go eat. I also make sure all of my inspectors make it to lunch on time - I know some people that have a tendency to work through lunch, like a certain CSA that also mentors my team... I don't let that happen to my inspectors.

Einstein is tough... but really, I don't see what prevents you from sending one person out to grab a couple pizzas for your drive/pit team while everyone else moves everything, then you can all grab a couple of slices during down time - trust me, I watched Einstein and saw plenty of teams sitting there bored while we were all waiting for the next match to happen - plenty of time to eat!

In the end, when you're at competition it's hard to fit more than a half dozen people actively working inside the pit at a time. Most teams have more people than that, and any lack of time to attend to things like eating just means the team isn't doing a proper job in cross training and delegating. Ultimately, it's a leadership fail to allow yourself or those you oversee to go without eating.

[Michael Corsetto]

Originally Posted by Jon Stratis

Einstein is tough... but really, I don't see what prevents you from sending one person out to grab a couple pizzas for your drive/pit team while everyone else moves everything, then you can all grab a couple of slices during down time - trust me, I watched Einstein and saw plenty of teams sitting there bored while we were all waiting for the next match to happen - plenty of time to eat!

Definitely! We plan on have food delivered to the drive/pit team on the dome floor. Would recommend teams plan on doing this.

-Mike

[The other Gabe]

to be kept in mind: teenagers do not always make intelligent choices (I know I didnt ). hell, adults do a lot of stupid stuff too. teaching these students how to manage their time in stressful, high-work situations like build season and events should be part of the FIRST experience - it's more than just robots, no? Although I do agree with the general sentiment in this thread, that most of these are not FIRST's issue, save the food breaks and paper airplanes, it doesn't mean the FIRST and the teams shouldn't be aware of these things, and try to at least mitigate the ill effects of FRC as much as possible.

[dradel]

Anyone ever consider first is a practical life lesson?? If you pay attention the program will teach you more than how parts fit together, or how to figure out a back driving issue. It can teach you how to prioritize your time, which is huge once in college and or out into the real world of work.

As said earlier sometimes you have to push yourself to meet a deadline or whatever, but real world doesn't stop because your a little tired. Biggest difference is mom and dad won't be in your real world job to hold your hand, well that is unless your going to be one of those live in your parents house till your 35 people, but that is a entirely different rant.

Bottom line is FRC is a life lesson for those willing to learn the lesson. Learn to prioritize, learn how to balance FRC with the rest of your world.... And for the sake of sanity for the rest of us the present generation needs to stop looking for everyone else to fix all of their problems.