The negative effects of FRC

[Mark Sheridan]

Originally Posted by Hallry

Just want to point out that if anyone knows how to manage their time well, it's Mike and Team 67. They meet only 3 times a week during build season - 4pm to 7pm on Tuesdays and Thursdays and 8am to 4pm on Saturdays. And yet look at their consistent robot quality year after year.

I noticed more and more top tier teams that cut down on their meeting times or always manged their time well enough to not meet 7 days a week. Next year, I am having Code Orange reduce from 7 days a week to 4 days a week. I noticed this year, our productivity nose dived after meeting continuously for 20 days, thus i think we will be a lot more productive long term by taking days off.

[Mike Schreiber]

Originally Posted by Hallry

Just want to point out that if anyone knows how to manage their time well, it's Mike and Team 67. They meet only 3 times a week during build season - 4pm to 7pm on Tuesdays and Thursdays and 8am to 4pm on Saturdays. And yet look at their consistent robot quality year after year.

Ryan,

Thanks for the accolades, but I didn't really mean us. I was referring to teams like 1114 whose majority of mentors only meet on weekends, and 1678 who I'm hoping Mike Corsetto will elaborate on because I'd be interested in hearing it.

As for our 3 day build schedule, that is our 'official schedule' where all student attendance is required. It usually is accurate for the first 3 weeks until we really start building a robot. Until then it's a lot of detailed design hours that aren't always done on site. After week 3 we start meeting more often to actually build both robots. we add unofficial Monday and Wednesday meetings around then if there are parts that need to be made or assembled or practice bot needs programming. Week 6 usually ends up being a 6 day week. In 3 years on HOT I've only come in on one Sunday - this year.

[gblake]

OP, I'm curious.

A) It appears you were focused on building a great on-the-field robot, and on getting far down the path to Einstein? Is that true? If I'm wrong, ignore the next question.

B) How do you think you would feel (then and now) if instead your last year/season had focused on getting as many non-STEM students as possible to try STEM things that they hadn't done before, while also helping build a fun, adequate, middle-of-the-road robot? If you did do that, along with everything else you described, my advice is to stop volunteering for too much bad stress. If you didn't, I'm sure that FIRST wants participants to use the FRC program to place a greater emphasis those non-STEM students than participants place on the robot.

Creating the robots and going to competitions is an FRC tool, not the FRC goal. It's very easy to shed bad stress if you look at things that way. Shedding bad stress, is a good thing.

Blake

[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.

[fargus111111111]

I tend to side with most of the other people who have already posted that FIRST, FRC especially, is stressful, but that stress is good. It is through the stress that the competition feel really comes out for me. The level of stress, for me, is what moves FRC beyond the average science fair. Personally, as far as eating is concerned, I always put some snacks in my pocket that I eat between matches in case lunch or dinner winds up being rather late. I do realize that for the drive team especially it is often hard on Saturday to find time for lunch. It is usually our policy that we meet with our alliance at a table in the lobby and one of our team members brings food to the drive team so we can inhale it before matches start. Sleep, as the original post mentions is something that we, myself included, do not get enough of on competition weekends, but something all our mentors stress to us is that they do not want to hear that you are tired and need a nap halfway through the day. They encourage us not to stay up to the wee hours of the morning playing games and we always have an 11:00 curfew, that being said, I often struggle to stay awake on the bus ride home.

I too am a graduating senior and the team's impact on me has been tremendous. I hope that going forward you discuss the issues you found with your mentors because most of the issues you addressed, except the paper airplanes, were matters that 343 talks about at the meeting just before a competition and at the nightly meetings at the competitions and we seem to do a good job of not having a major issue with any of these. I cannot speak for Einstein as we have not been there for several years, but I did notice last year at Championships that the paper airplanes did seem a bit excessive at times. IMO they should set aside a time and place for the planes and ask teams to not throw them outside of that window.

[NShep98]

I won't touch on Champs because I've never been, but for other events my team has a practice where immediately following the last match before lunch/dinner, however short it has been cut, the drive team and ONLY the drive team (with the exception of one or two crucial pit crew members) will go and eat, quickly at that.

Everyone else stays behind until the these people return to make sure the robot is in working shape, then they schedule out their meals however they feel like. I like this system because it gives the drivers a short break while handing over responsibility to those who won't necessarily need to be on/near the field anytime soon. Someone above mentioned the importance of delegation, and this is one example of how that can work.

[Michael Corsetto]

Originally Posted by Mike Schreiber

1678 who I'm hoping Mike Corsetto will elaborate on because I'd be interested in hearing it.

1678 meets four days a week during Build/Comp season. Wed/Thurs 6:30pm-9pm, Sat/Sun 9am-5pm. Additionally, we meet 9am-5pm on Mondays that the school has off (ends up being 2-3 days during this time period).

To set the stage, I am our only mechanical design mentor and I don't CAD parts, just review student work. We "get away" with limited design resources and limited meeting schedule by making purposeful compromises, planning well, and communicating outside of meeting times.

More on our design compromises here and here.

Some of our design review's happen in person, but many happen on my iPhone via the GrabCAD app at around 4am (when I wake up). I take some screenshots, highlight some things, and send feedback to student designers for them to work on during their own time.

We can't always hit the four meeting per week goal. Our robot design this season placed an enormous burden on our Robot Programming Team. They met closer to 6 days/week most of the competition season, knocking out bugs and iterating 2-ball auto. We are hoping that many of the lessons learned this season will result in established technical and communication improvements that lessen the burden on our Robot Programmers next season.

We had two or three very late nights for programming that ended up not being as productive as they were harmful to our productivity on subsequent days. We will be avoiding late nights next year.

I love the responsibility/stress of FRC. A quote from a mentor of mine:

"The seed of potential is cracked by the weight of responsibility."

The higher the stakes, the higher the payoff. That's the magic of FRC.

-Mike

[MrRoboSteve]

I was overinvolved as a senior in high school. It hurt my grades. It was the right decision for me -- fun to do then, and not a big negative life impact looking back from now. Based on your goals, a different choice might be better for you.

Of course, I did miss a week because of catching Mono. But, hey.

[XaulZan11]

Originally Posted by Michael Corsetto

1678 meets four days a week during Build/Comp season. Wed/Thurs 6:30pm-9pm, Sat/Sun 9am-5pm. Additionally, we meet 9am-5pm on Mondays that the school has off (ends up being 2-3 days during this time period).

That (not counting the all day Monday meetings) still is more hours per week than the average team that meets six days a week (Monday through Saturday). There is no way to build consistently very competitive robots without putting a lot of time into it...

[itsjustjon]

Biggest negative is definitely the time commitment. It affects almost everything else that I either enjoy doing or am already committed to completing.

- Schoolwork: Hah, no time for that unless you can manage your time like an insane person. While this is a good goal to strive for, it is very hard to attain and unrealistic for some. And yes, FIRST may look great on college apps and life experience in general, but very few top tier colleges will consider you if your grades are being sacrificed at the expense of an extracurricular.

- Social Life: I have a sneaking suspicion that many of us go dark in terms of our social lives during the robotics season. Not all of my friends are in robotics, and I miss out on a lot of fun stuff that exists outside of FIRST when I participate in FIRST.

- Self-Everything: Stress is great for short or moderate periods of time. Its what propels me to have an insane work ethic for last-minute projects and it lights a fire under me so I generally get stuff done. Surprisingly though, stress for an extended length of time doesn't do the mind or body any good. That's not even considering the amount of people you potentially affect when you're stressed, too.

- The Team: Forcing a group of people to constantly work (and sometimes deal with) one another doesn't do any amount of good for the relationships and friendships that exist within the team. Stress, lack of sleep, and other such byproducts of Build Season strains more friendships than it helps.

These are major things which have probably been discussed beforehand. That being said, eh, who cares?

[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.

[Michael Corsetto]

Originally Posted by XaulZan11

That (not counting the all day Monday meetings) still is more hours per week than the average team that meets six days a week (Monday through Saturday). There is no way to build consistently very competitive robots without putting a lot of time into it...

You're probably right. What are the average hours per week for an FRC team?

I assume we sit at around 22-25 hours per week during build/comp season.

-Mike

[jijiglobe]

Originally Posted by gblake

OP, I'm curious.

A) It appears you were focused on building a great on-the-field robot, and on getting far down the path to Einstein? Is that true? If I'm wrong, ignore the next question.

My team is not focused entirely on competitive success, but we do work really hard towards it. We also work really hard on outreach programs to help students learn, and spread the culture of FIRST that we love. We believe that competitive success grants us a larger platform with which to accomplish this. If we were a less competitive team, for instance, we would not have been invited to participate in the China Robotics Challenge, which has been an incredible experience for our team, and a huge benefit to FRC in China.

Originally Posted by gblake

B) How do you think you would feel (then and now) if instead your last year/season had focused on getting as many non-STEM students as possible to try STEM things that they hadn't done before, while also helping build a fun, adequate, middle-of-the-road robot? If you did do that, along with everything else you described, my advice is to stop volunteering for too much bad stress. If you didn't, I'm sure that FIRST wants participants to use the FRC program to place a greater emphasis those non-STEM students than participants place on the robot.

Blake

While there are positive sides to my teams competitive culture, as a team with ~100 members, there is a huge organizational responsibility that is given to our leaders. It's just hard to lead the team effectively without taking on some amount of stress. My school is also (by some measures) the top STEM school in the city, so it's hard for me to reach non-stem students, furthermore, our team is pushing the limits of reasonable size, and it would be difficult to reach more students within our team.

[frcguy]

Originally Posted by Michael Corsetto

You're probably right. What are the average hours per week for an FRC team?



I assume we sit at around 22-25 hours per week during build/comp season.



-Mike

We met around 28-32 hours per week during the build season, and stepped it down a significant amount afterwards.

[TheModMaster8]

A system were you have 1 or 2 co leaders supervised by a captain takes the load and distributes it a lot,You as a individual must weigh the importance of both homework and FIRST, I personally chose FIRST and would do so every time. Their comes a point when you must ask for help, you are on a TEAM! not a solo mission. Be proud, you and your team got placed in the top 16 teams in the world! hard work will normally payoff and it did in your case