Your Worst FIRST experience

[Joe Matt]

I've had loads of bad experences, but hey, that's part of ANY group. I won't post them here, ones that pertain to our team and other teams. But I just wanted to post to say that you are not alone, there are problems, as is anything that's run by people who have emotions and egos.

[Will Hanashiro]

hmm... my worst FIRST experiance would have to be when i got my fingernail ripped off on a surface grinder. but it also showed me that we were much more than a team, but we were a family. the concern that came after me being in the hospital was overwhelming... and it made me proud to be part of a wonderful family. in the end, my fingernail grew back, and the family is as strong as ever.

realizing that my driving career on 322 has come to an end is also kind of depressing, but i'm also looking foward to the contributions that i can give as a college mentor.

[Barry Bonzack]

My team had some issues this year as well. Working our hearts out for 6 weeks, and ending up with a robot that didn't move all UCF regional wasn't even the worst of them. However, of course, I am totally addicted to FIRST, and the good always outweighs the bad. I'll deffinately be back next season.

[Mike Schroeder]

My Worst FIRST experinence is probobly reading this thread, if its anything that FIRST's competitive spirit has taught me, its to take the good with the bad,
Telling 1500+ people your worst experince isnt gonna change them, the only thing that can change them, is by learning from these mistakes/bad experince,

All i have to say is that this isn't very Inspiring

[Dorienne]

My worst experience was last year when a team member was talking about me right in front of me. He was a very rude guy, and he acted like he was God Himself. Anyways, I was doing something I can't remember what, and he just started talking about how useless I was, how stupid and annoying...and I just lost it. I ran outside crying up a storm. One of the guys on our team sent out the other girl on the team to talk to me...and after about 10-20 minutes of crying and people trying to help me, I was okay. I just hated the feeling of uselessness and pain I felt. Robotics was a way to get away from the people who were rude and tormented me. It gave me a release, and was the only place I felt needed and loved. It's a lot better now, and that experience will soon just be a faded memory.
--d0ri

[-PauL-]

oh god.....in atlanta, we were hanging out in my friends room around 10 that night, and it was pure hell. there was alot of stuff going on between the team members, so people were coming in and out, crying, yelling..... we just wanted to watch a movie. Anyway, we started to kick people out, and not let them in. well, one kid on out team, who was somewhat large wanted to come in the room. we wouldnt let him, and we closed the shades on him. after a few minutes, we hear a knock on the window, so we open it up, and he had his pants down right on the window, shaking it up and down.......there are some things you just cant unsee.......**shudders**....as for the competition, nothin's bad really, except when the FIRST cordinators are on a power trip, it gets really annoying....thats about it

[Lisa Perez]

I have one more! But it's probably more of a funny/scary experience. Anyway.

We were just walking back from a restaurant in Cleveland last year, the day before the Buckeye Regional. For some reason, the team splits up. Oh yeah, someone had to stop by 7-11. Getting back on track, so 10 of us are walking back to the hotel, 5 are walking elsewhere. It turns out that this guy who just got released from jail approaches the other group, shows them his jail ID (at the same time saying "Want to see my jail ID?"), and asks them for money. Obviously, they ran like no other.

So we get back to the hotel at around the same time because we started running as well (just because it was dark and we were getting creeped out by some very, very sketchy people) and the other group tells us the story. But it was pretty funny afterwards, we started sneaking up on and scaring the living daylights out of each other. We always manage to turn a bad situation into a good one..

[sanddrag]

One bad experience (I wouldn't say the worst) was at the 2004 Phoenix regional when we broke our pneumatic relief valve. Not one team in the arena had a spare relief valve. Spare parts did not have one spare relief valve. We even offered to trade team members for the relief valve. There was not one spare relief valve anywhere in that arena. We lost probably 2 or 3 matches just due to that.

Anyway, a sort of scary experience was when we had to go to the Six Points Hardware store to get a new one. This guy told us it was about a block away. It's great he told us about it, otherwise we would have been out for the regional. Anyway, luckily an arena staff employee gave us a ride on the golf cart out to the street. But from then on, it got a little scary. We go out in the street and there are a bunch of "questionable figures" lingering about the sidewalk. I really wanted to go back behind that gate of the arena parking lot but I knew we needed that valve. Luckily I had my friend (this really big guy) with me but even still I kept my hand in my pocket on my leatherman tool knife for the whole way there. By now you can probably tell this wasn't the best part of town. Run down buildings, grafiti, etc. Anyway, looking for the hardware store (which was supposed to be a block away), we got a little lost because it was more like 5 blocks away and Phoenix has big blocks. On the way there, we encountered a new "Adult" store opening just a couple doors down. The payoff of this adventure was when we got to the hardware store. This was like the absolute greatest hardware store I have ever been to. And they had our valve. Once we got the valve, we went back the way we came. Very soon, we encountered a very deranged man yelling "Five Dolla Bubble! Five Dolla Bubble!" And he had a bubble gun and was running through traffic spraying bubbles everywhere. When he saw us, he started coming toward us trying to sell us some bubbles. We went the other way, and then so did he. Finally we just picked up the pace and dodged down an alley. That wasn't the greatest idea. There was this homelss guy coming down the alley with a shopping cart full of who knows what. When we tried to stay on the side to avoid him, he moved over. Luckily he passed us without incident, but that is because he was too busy cleaning his crack pipe! We eventually got back to the arena parking lot to where we walked in the driveway. There was a car coming out and for some reason my friend stands in the middle of the driveway with his hand out like he's a policeman or someting (my friend gets stupid ideas like he's a cop sometimes). My friend then steps aside and the car takes off with the guy screaming profanity and making obscene gestures. Anyway, the guy in this car obviously not with FIRST. Then we got back inside, installed the valve, and it has worked like a charm ever since.

Some story huh?

EDIT: I forgot to ad that on our way to the hardare store, on every telephone pole there was a wanted add for this guy for homicide. Then on a couple poles there were a couple different wanted ads too. Scary huh?

[Joshua May]

Originally Posted by Lisa Perez

I have one more! But it's probably more of a funny/scary experience. Anyway.

We were just walking back from a restaurant in Cleveland last year, the day before the Buckeye Regional. For some reason, the team splits up. Oh yeah, someone had to stop by 7-11. Getting back on track, so 10 of us are walking back to the hotel, 5 are walking elsewhere. It turns out that this guy who just got released from jail approaches the other group, shows them his jail ID (at the same time saying "Want to see my jail ID?"), and asks them for money. Obviously, they ran like no other.

So we get back to the hotel at around the same time because we started running as well (just because it was dark and we were getting creeped out by some very, very sketchy people) and the other group tells us the story. But it was pretty funny afterwards, we started sneaking up on and scaring the living daylights out of each other. We always manage to turn a bad situation into a good one..

Yeah, in 2003 we walked from our hotel to a local Denny's, at the SoCal Regional. Keep in mind that the surrounding area of USC is pretty much the infamous South Central. So we were getting pretty freaked out by all the shady characters, and to add on I was wearing a bright red shirt and walking next to a guy in a blue shirt. Not a good idea...

[Richomundo]

Originally Posted by HHSJosh

Yeah, in 2003 we walked from our hotel to a local Denny's, at the SoCal Regional. Keep in mind that the surrounding area of USC is pretty much the infamous South Central. So we were getting pretty freaked out by all the shady characters, and to add on I was wearing a bright red shirt and walking next to a guy in a blue shirt. Not a good idea...

yeah you know us big time gangster robot kids... lol

[MrToast]

My worst FIRST experience came while we were prototyping our hook. There's this guy (adult actually) on our team that's a little difficult to work with. He had this idea for a hook: There would be a tall (like really tall; about 4') screw onto which another shaft would be screwed. Spinning the screw would cause the shaft to rise, and a hook would be on the end.

So he made his hook, which turned out to be this 50+ pound monstrosity. The screw turned at about 40 RPM, which meant it took about 5 minutes for the stupid thing to extend fully.

It wasn't this that really bothered me. What really took the cake was that this guy absolutely REFUSED to listen to any other ideas. He was adamant that his hook was the way it was going to be, that it was the best, that everything else was going to suck, etc. We had about $5000 of machine shop time donated to his screwy (haha) hook, which was a full 25% of the entire shop time we had. And we didn't even use the stupid thing.

Ugh I wanted to throttle him.

MrToast

[Jeff Waegelin]

My worst FIRST experience is sortof a personal mistake. I was human player during the 2003 season, and did a remarkably good job. I played 47 straight matches without dropping a single bin, or receiving a single penalty. I'd done all sorts of risky moves, like carrying all four bins at one time (most people carried them 2 and 2) and running stacks across the field with no problems. Then, in the first match of the division quarterfinals at the Championship, I missed my balance ever so slightly, and dropped my 4-stack. I knew, as soon as I stepped on to the field, that it was going to fall, but there was nothing I could do to stop it. I tried to recover the bins, got flagged for a penalty, and then missed the 10-second timer (the only time I missed it all season). On top of that, the scoring table disabled our partner, Chief Delphi, instead of our robot, causing us to miss autonomous and lose the match. It felt terrible to know that losing the match was my own personal fault. Fortunately, we managed to come back from a first-round loss and win the series, but it still remains my worst FIRST experience.

[LauraN]

Well I'm going to go with the theme of telling a bad experience and explaining what I learned from it...this is a good one, I promise.

It sounds cliche and it sounds like something we all already know, but I really think it is something we need to experience in order to learn: I learned not to judge people before I met them.

There were two people from Team X who really did not get along with my team. There had been problems for a long time and then there was a big issue with these people spreading negative things about our team to other teams. This was definitely a very frustrating and hurtful experience and I would say it was probably my "worst FIRST experience."

Most of these problems occurred at a regional, and on Friday morning our team was upset to discover that we were to be allied with Team X for one of our qualifying matches. We were all upset and apprehensive about having to interact with this team who we thought harbored such negative feelings towards us. A teammate and I decided to approach the team awhile before the match to try to "break the ice."

We went to their pits and before we knew it we were standing around with them for almost half an hour, talking about the competition, congratulating each other on standings, comparing the designs we used on the robot, and talking about school and friends and other everyday topics. They became one of our favorite teams and we cheered each other on throughout the whole regional, and to this day I'm still in touch with one of their members.

So I have definitely learned my lesson about judging people before I meet them.

Happy endings are good. =)

When i was in like 6th grade, and my sister was on the team, i went to the national championship. Our team was taking a team picture. Everyone was in it and about to take the picture. Me and my dad were standing on the side just watching. I really wanted to be in the picture just to be in it to just tick off my sister. So how they were going to take the picture was just regular but in the very front two students from the team were laying down on there sides. So my dad dared me to run in front of the two boys and block there faces so I can be in the picture, and that hed give me 10 dollars to do it. So i ran infront of the two boys laying down (i layed infront of them to block their faces), right as they took the picture. Everyone was yellin at me and gettin mad at me. And my dad was just standin there laughin. So i got really emebarresed so i told my dad i was goin to the pit area to walk around for a little bit to get away from them all. So i guess my dad forgot i told him that i was goin to the pit area to walk around, so everyone was wonderin where i was and thye got scared i guess, so everyone basically except the drive team and the important people went looking for me like almost all over disney haha.
Finally, I showed up, and they got even more mad at me, because 1. they thought i stormed off gettin lost and stuff and 2. they all missed one of our matches because of spendin time looking for me when all this time i was in the pit area. I felt bad, but it truly was a bad experience for me even though i hadnt been on the team at that time, so it could of been used against me in the future when i joined the team. My dad always brings it up to me, and i always tell him its his fault because he really embarresed me and i was nieve for takin that bet haha http://www2.wildstang.org/gallery/20...ang_team_pic_2 as u can see in the picture, everyone gave me mean looks haha

[AsimC]

My worst FIRST experience has to be at the 2004 nationals during our chairman's interview. Our team was the last team to be intereviewed, it was around 4 oclock and 24 teams had gone before us. We started to present when half way through one of the judges FELL ASLEEP on us. This judge had their eyes closed and was not writing anything down or never asked us any questions, while the other judges were. I mean, I understand that it was a long day for them, but is it fair to not care at all?? That was a bad experience by itself and what made it worse was the fact that the rest of the judges ripped us apart on very small details that only teams that have alot of money would respond to. I tried to explain to them that we were just an average team, but they didnt seem to care. To me, it seemed like all they cared about was how much money one team could spend. This experience temporarily made me lose my faith in FIRST, but i got over it after a week, mainly b/c im obsessed with FIRST and I love whats its doing around the world.