Eliminating "Start Build Day"

[Jon Stratis]

Originally Posted by EricH

You didn't happen to have any school-related or school-organized activities other than robotics, did you? You know, like sports/band?

See, if you're only in robotics, you have that time. If not... you have multiple activities trying to take that time away. Something will eventually have to give--and it'll be either sleep, sanity, or schedule. And my money is that either all three give in that order, or that schedule gives first and saves the other two.

I can second this. I can't even begin to describe the struggle it is to keep kids involved in the fall when they're doing swimming, cross country, volleyball, or other activities, or how tough it is in the spring when they leave the team for softball, golf, or whatever else.

Some schools have 2000 students, and when you consider that many activities have limited space, that space goes towards the students who dedicate themselves to that activity. I can certainly understand how, in that situation, many of the students on a team wouldn't have any other activities to compete during the rest of the year.

But other schools are smaller. Much smaller. The one I work with is in the 300-400 range. At that size, just about every student is involved in multiple activities. Thinking back over the past few years, I can think of only one of our captain's that didn't also have another activity in the off-season (and in some cases, were captains for those activities as well). And these are some of the most dedicated students we've had.

The smaller the school, the more hats every student wears. I won't say it's a bad thing (exploring more activities is rather a good thing, I think)... but it does mean that you need to be careful about overlapping activities. Stretching FIRST across even more sports seasons would force some of these students to make a choice, which I don't think is something we really want to do.