The negative effects of FRC

[The other Gabe]

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

when I was on 2046, meetings were every day from 3:00-5:00 (ok probably more like 8:00 for some people), as well as 11:00 (AM)-whenever people left on Saturday. Almost none of these meetings were manditory, though, except for some tuseday meetings. IIRC the hour requirements for team members boiled down to something like 15 per week, though you just needed to meet a total amount of hours by the end of build season. This is all assuming I'm remembering stuff correctly, though... it's been what, a whole year now?

[sanddrag]

Originally Posted by Mark Sheridan

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.

Interesting. We're hoping to take a different approach to revamp our schedule. We're looking to bring FRC inside the school day, 1:30-3:00pm Monday through Friday year round. Fewer hours per day, more days. This will get us about double the Fall training hours that we have had previously, and maybe half the build hours. We may add some Friday nights and Saturdays into the schedule as well for build season.

We're going to be shifting our focus from building great robots to building great people who are highly skilled and very educated. And if we still happen to get good robots out if the process, cool, but if we don't, we've achieved a better outcome than just the robot.

To win at FIRST (trophy and banner wise) takes either an enormous amount of time in which you do nothing else or you have to get lucky,which we never seem to do. To win as a team takes only a set of goals and a plan to achieve them, and a schedule that YOU set. I'm almost done trying to win at FIRST, and I'm ready to go for more personal and home-grown "wins". I want to get back to learning things and making cool things with students because WE want to, not because FIRST required us to or because we're trying to outdo those best teams that we maybe never will.

FIRST Robotics is a program who caters to those who are quick and sharp. It's not for every student, and in some ways, is not a great way to educate students, due to the intense competition and schedule. Other programs and projects can achieve some very excellent educational outcomes on much more reasonable schedules.

The amount of time FIRST teams spend and the level of competition these days is way beyond what it ever was when I was in high school. Back then, your average team had a reasonable shot at winning. Nowadays, you're average team doesn't stand a chance in my mind. It's become a competition of who can spend more hours.

[Basel A]

I really overdid it in high school (to the point that I chose myself to be less involved in FRC my senior year). I really think that helped me with time management, willpower to focus, etc., skills that have served me really well in college and internships. At the time, though, it was hell. FRC was awesome, getting a few hours of sleep a night for several months was not. My advice to the OP is to step back as much as you feel you need. The team will survive without you (as long as you're upfront about your intentions and don't just flake).

[caume]

The lunch thing is huge. Every competition I've been to in my 3 years, I've been in the pits nearly the entire time. I'm the drive train operator, so I am constantly in-between running the robot and fixing the robot. There is simply no time to eat. At a competition where we got into eliminations, I almost passed out because I was unable to get food. The entry guards were very picky about people bringing in food, so I couldn't get anything except a $10 hot dog. I weighed myself before and after the competition, and there was a 10lb difference. I am already nearly underweight, so that was bad.

Lunch breaks need to actually be lunch breaks, and students/mentors/everyone should be able to get food that has a realistic price.

[Fusion_Clint]

Ensuring the drive team/pit crew get something to eat is the lead mentor's responsibility. How they do it is up to them, but they have to make sure that they are hydrated and feed.

[dmaggio744]

Im incredibly glad this was brought up, and completely agree with the lunch situation.

FIRST participants usually exude enthusiasm about their hard work, but rarely talk about where to draw the line between sacrificing time to enjoy doing FRC, and FRC not allowing them to have time to enjoy. During build season, grades, extracurricular involvement, and even health(both mental AND physical) take their toll on both students and adults.

[Knufire]

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.

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

Yes, why would someone ever chase excellence? That sounds rather uninspiring. We should definitely all sit down and hold hands singing kumbayah, because anything that stressed you out too much is never worth it.

If that was the sentiment of a team that I joined in high school, I would have never stayed in or cared about this program past graduation.

[The other Gabe]

Originally Posted by Fusion_Clint

Ensuring the drive team/pit crew get something to eat is the lead mentor's responsibility. How they do it is up to them, but they have to make sure that they are hydrated and feed.

don't matter how well you plan lunch if it's cancelled due to the event running behind

[jgerstein]

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.

1257 used to meet 5-6 days a week during build season. After a disastrous 2013 season we stepped back a bit to do some serious re-evaluation of how we operated. One thing we realized was that as much as we stressed out about not having enough time, we weren't using the time we did have effectively - our students (and mentors) were suffering from burnout and exhaustion, and it was leading to stress, anger, and a great deal of wasted time.

We ended up cutting our build schedule back to 3 hour meetings, 3 days a week, with the option to have additional work time if it was needed. It turned out that we got more work done in fewer hours, and without students failing their classes due to robotics overload. I hope to teach my students that more work isn't necessarily better.

[gblake]

Originally Posted by Knufire

Yes, why would someone ever chase excellence? That sounds rather uninspiring. We should definitely all sit down and hold hands singing kumbayah, because anything that stressed you out too much is never worth it.

If that was the sentiment of a team that I joined in high school, I would have never stayed in or cared about this program past graduation.

Who, other than you, said anything about not chasing excellence?

The OP gave a fine answer that shed useful light on his situation.

Your comment seems to imply that you think there is only one kind of excellence in FRC. There are many, and few of them require a one-dimensional pursuit of a blue banner. Teaching students about them, and enabling students to pursue them, would be a fine accomplishment any FRC team could be proud of.

I remain sure that FIRST wants participants to use the FRC program to place a greater emphasis on those non-STEM students, than participants place on the robot.

Blake

[Oblarg]

I've written several posts on this already, so I'll be brief, but you're not at all alone in your struggles, OP. I burned out quite badly in 2014 and 2015, to the point where I was legitimately concerned about my health. This year, I was forced to step back and do less, and it was certainly the right thing to do.

You, and only you, can determine what your own hard limits are. Find them, and don't push yourself past them. FIRST is not worth that. Push yourself within those limits. Push what you can do with the time you can afford to spend - always strive to be better! - but don't ever feel compelled to jeopardize your own physical or mental well-being in pursuit of FRC. It is not good for you, and it ultimately is not good for FRC (it's much more harmful to a team to lose a member or mentor for a long period of time, possibly permanently, to burnout than it is to make due with somewhat less of their time on a continuing basis).

[techhelpbb]

Have pushed myself beyond rational limits quite a few times I agree with those who encourage to recognize limits.
FRC is a great thing but not worth driving tired, operating machine tools unsafely or ruining your life over.

If you can not be competitive without taking risks too big you are not operating safely.
What risk is too big varies from situation to situation.
Good leaders know to ask for a lot and settle for the reasonable.

Feel free to disagree but there are limits and within that inconsistency, sustainability dictates you find common ground not push to a breaking point over and over.
Have built utterly massive systems: crisis managers love their emergencies but that means they get desensitized to what they lose being ruled by crisis.
Do not make the mistake of being a crisis manager it is no different than being an adrenaline junkie.

(Sorry about the double post I had to delete. It was a phone thing.)

[dtengineering]

Let's remember the first paragraph of the O.P.'s comments... we all feel FRC has a net positive impact.

To say that you can get positive return without any investment... well, I keep getting emails that offer that, but somehow I don't believe them.

The investment in FRC does require some sacrifice... a bit of sleep there, some unhealthy eating there... maybe an occasional homework assignment that is completed to the "good enough" stage rather than "excellent".

There are many careers that offer a trade off between investment and return, too. For those who want to work 24/7 in stressful environments... you can probably achieve higher financial returns than those who would rather go for a bike ride on a sunny afternoon, or spend time with their family.

Learning a little about your own comfort levels while doing FRC might help you make some good career choices down the road.

You're right that there are some 'negatives' to FRC, but if you look at them as investments, and feel you've got a net positive return... then they aren't so bad, are they?

Jason

[techhelpbb]

Originally Posted by dtengineering

you can probably achieve higher financial returns than those who would rather go for a bike ride on a sunny afternoon, or spend time with their family.

Learning a little about your own comfort levels while doing FRC might help you make some good career choices down the road.

I went from wealthy to poor to wealthy again by the age of 40.
Recognizing what you actually get for the work is the key skill to success.
You can work till you die and be neither happy nor wealthy for that.

FRC can give you a lot but there are limits.
So you have to ask what you hope to achieve and, if you lead, how you help those you lead achieve their goals to make it worth doing.
Success in FRC is largely not just winning because if it was this would not be worth doing for a lot of people.

As an investment FRC is actually pretty low risk because there is a lot of return even for those that are not the best on Earth frequently.
So not sure we need a crisis as much as strategic commitments.

Financially FRC is really a hedge fund not a short sale.

[waialua359]

Originally Posted by Mike Schreiber

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.

I think its fair to say that not every team, especially ours, can follow a schedule like Team 67 or 1114, if what youre referencing is true.
We meet 7 days a week and they pretty long per day. In fact, its the opposite for us where I can count on my fingers the last 10 years we took a Sunday off (Superbowl Sunday included for some).
The biggest factor is mentor experience and not every team has that level of talent relatively speaking.
We definitely rank among the best when it comes to commitment, desire, and a determination to succeed. However, we spend way too many hours trying to overcome talent in trying to do so.
There is a lot of pressure when you spend lots of money to attend regionals and the robot never coming back to your shop (and no 2nd robot) from end of build season to the middle of May.
If I had one suggestion that would put the situations described by the OP on FIRST, it would be to provide resources/suggestions to teams on how to address some of them. Many newer/rookie teams have leaned on veteran teams for suggestions....I get that. But perhaps coming from FIRST it would do a whole lot more for the FRC community.

Teams with experience and resources have a huge advantage when it comes to FRC tournament logistics. They can focus more on the competition, strategy and scouting vs. those that dont........including making sure students stay hydrated/fed.