Stress

[Billfred]

How do I deal with stress? Music.

The last big presentation I had to do last semester, I was worked up. (Last-minute small stuff, really. Moral of the story? Get it done five weeks in advance to practice.)

So I went in search of some music to calm me down. I downloaded John Cena's "The Time Is Now" (iTMS link) on a lark (and partially because my roommate watches WWE RAW and his entrance music was stuck in my head), and loaded it on the iPod. Worked like a charm. Don't even know why it worked...but I figured I'd share.

(Since that's only three minutes, and I needed a bit more music, I wound up sticking it in with a playlist of other songs, including some Wu-Tang Clan, Incubus, OutKast, and Chocolate Starfish-era Limp Bizkit. Fill yours with whatever gets you mentally ready.)

[KenWittlief]

Stress is a perfectly normal human reaction to what goes on at a FIRST event. And its not just the drive team, its the whole team

imagine being the team "Empress of Lodging and Nurishment" standing at the check-in desk at the Holiday Inn in Cleveland Ohio, with 50 team mates, mentors and parents standing behind you

and hearing "the computer shows you have 10 rooms booked in Cleveland New Mexico, not Cleveland Ohio:

The point is, it takes the whole team to get that robot on the playfield. Every year, the night before our 1st event we sat down and explained to the team that " if we win, we win as a team, and if we lose, we lose at as a team - but win or lose we are all going home on that bus saturday night, as a team"

if your design team did an outstanding job then the robot would practically drive itself. If the fabrication team did an outstanding job then you would have 4 weeks of driver practice before your event... You get the idea - no single person is responsible for the success, or the failures your team will have.

BTW, the result of stress that has no resolution = depression! you would not expect that, so make sure your team has plenty of time to blow off steam, exercise or goto the hotel pool, goto the team party and dance the night away - whatever it takes to resolve that 'flight or fight' instinct.

[KrtZer0]

We were really stressed in the pit last year. We had to take off about 10lbs in fifteen minutes. That is really stressful work. If you slip, then the robot is disabled. Yay for the circle drill

[Henry_Mareck]

though i have no experience driving in FIRST, i can offer my opinion on what i think would work (in no particular order)
#1) Music, preferably Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd or the Beatles (in my opinon) ACDC will do in a pinch.
#2) Confidence. beleive!
#3) Strategy + practice

[c-squared_2006]

Actually I find that having a good scouting team takes away some of the stess. Massages works. Food too, just not in the pit please.

[Nica F.]

i agree with everyone who said music.

when i was coach at the san diego scrimmage, all i needed to do was pop out my ipod and listen to the beatles or something like 80's music covers and i was fine.



but at the same time, i must say that getting stress off drive team at big competitions especially if its something like the final match. so far something that i noticed that seemed to help is when we figured out wether or not our drive team became nervous when we cheered for them. we found out that it actually loosened them up sometimes.


sometimes the best things to do to keep stress down is to figure out little things that can bug them.

[Li Jianliang]

Originally Posted by ChuNalt787

Have classical music playing in ur pit. believe me it calms the nerves. its really good to have in the background to think to. I read somewhere that patterns in the music help develop thinking patterns.

Classical music sounds like a good idea, but most likely the combined noise of all the teams in the pit would drown it out.
I work on the team animation so the stress period comes a week or two earlier, and after that barely any. The main source of my stress stems from completing and submitting the animation on time.
For the other areas of the team, I'd say attempting to complete/fix 'bot in the pit is the main cause of their stress... Feeling nervous before driving is perfectly normal, preferred in fact over *not* being stressed at all, because it shows that the person actually cares about performing well.

[spamified88]

My team stresses out waaaayyyy too easily. I mean sure it's not good when someone shouts "robot on fire, robot on fire!", but they freak out over the slightest things sometimes. I guess I'm the only cool/level-headed person on the team who is the voice of reason. Of course I also have to deal with people who try to pick up freshly cut steel and then throw it on the ground at least twenty time per day, but I guess that's just my team. This being my third year in FIRST, I've learned that stressing out doesn't help at all, and that it's just bad for your blood pressure. Oh well, I guess they'll never learn my secrets to life!

[Shadow]

Hmm... First year here, and I think my stress started about the time I asked last year's lead programmer what kinds of work I could be expecting as part of that division of our team, and the first word of his response was "uhm..."

After a long pause, he concluded with, "... stuff." And I knew it was going to be a long year.

Music helps, I listen to an odd mix of stuff from older Linken Park, Foo Fighters, 3 Doors Down, Iron Maiden, Rammstein... Right on up the ladder to In Flames, Lamb of God, Devil Driver, Cradle of Filth, Bleeding Through... The list continues. Every so often I even throw in some classical and never think twice about it.

[Ethulin]

Many of you have posted about how you pick drivers who do not stress.

But what kinds of tests have you developed to test the stress endurance of driver canidates?

[sudeepr71]

As the driver of 503’s robot last year (hopefully this year too!), me and the other driver realized that we had a solid robot and were pretty decent in what we did. Are attitude was that we could out drive half the teams and out smart (in our strategy) the other half. We had hardly any stress because we realized that if we lost a few matches, it isn’t really that big of a deal. Sure, winning is great and all, but there is no point to stress out about it. We wanted to be drivers because it is a lot of fun, and there is no point in ruining that fun with stress.

For those who listen to music, I’d suggest some Ben Folds, Rufus Wainwright, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, and Yo-Yo Ma.

[Shu Song]

For driver tryouts, we set up an obstacle course and get the whole team to watch and make as much noise as possible. We also played really now music to simulate the environment. All that noise added on to how much the candidates really wanna get picked, it creates just the right stress level for the tryout.

We are thinking of trying to set acutal situations for the drivers this year during try-outs. Like describe a situation to the driver just once and give them a set amount of time to react to the situation and we evaluate based on the performance. They we really get into how the stress affects decision making and not just motor skills.

[riboSquirrel]

personaly, i think by having stress incorperated in your system, it has the same effect as fear and nerves. they get us to do things we need to do, and alot of the time can get us to fucus on what need to be done. we had to do an entire table display, powerpoint and presentation(anyways... ALOT of stuff) because verything had fallen apart(litterally) so squeaker(grl u kno we miss ya!) and i pulled this out of our butts the night becfore competition, and we almost did perfectly, except kenesaw... had a sound system that could ALMOST be heard OUTSIDE of the building... and alot of the teams had grafics and such... i really felt like i had let my team down, but hey, next year we'll just bring saudering irons or blow torches to the competition... you know.. to make toasted marshmellows (DuH) well... thats all i have to say right 'bout now...

[phrontist]

If you want to combat stress, learn a bit about astronomy. If you are too lazy for that, download Google Earth. Zoom in on your neighborhood, and soom out slowly.

Realize that you are one of 7 billion of the most incomprehensibly miniscule specs imaginable compared to the earth, and the earth is incomprehensibly tiny in comparison to our solar system, and "our" solar system is incomprehensibly tiny compared to "our" wing of "our" galaxy, which is one of billions. BILLIONS. Chances are not even a single percent of a single percent of a single percent of the world's specs know, or ever will know, anything about you.

Life is fleeting, and, in engineering parlance, negligible. Which is not to say that you should lie about painting your fingernails black and listening to Kurt Cobain, but rather that worrying about the past or future is comically useless, as you can't do anything about either and neither really matters. It's a cliche, but live in "the moment".

My advice:
-Meander the pits. Talk to other teams; every team I've talked to has a unique perspective on the game and it's interesting to hear how they approach the game.
-Watch a few matches.
-Take a walk outside (A personal favorite for when I only have a few minutes)
-Fix your robot ASAP from returning from a match
-Prep your strategy with plenty of time to spare before the next match
-Eat and sleep. Mountain Dew does not count as a viable source of daily nutrition despite it's alluring green glow.

Mike