Most undervalued job

[Philimator]

On my team the most undervauled job would have to be (non-mechanically) the animation team. This yaer we won our first Visualization award ever, But otherwise we arent as vauled as the people who work on the robot.

[BuddyB309]

Originally Posted by Philimator

On my team the most undervauled job would have to be (non-mechanically) the animation team. This yaer we won our first Visualization award ever, But otherwise we arent as vauled as the people who work on the robot.

I here you bro. The first year our team did animation i was the only one who wanted to do it. I almost got myself kicked off the team (we had a different team cordinator back then) Now most of the mechanical people think we waste time.

Another undervauled job is the Spirit team and the Promotions team. Our mechanical gurus were talking on the way home "Im so glad our spirit team didnt come up with something stupid to wear, I wouldnt wear it" I tried to convince them that teams who do crazy stuff like that have a whole lot of fun. but no one wants to do it. So i barrow other teams crazy things to wear and have fun with it.

Same people think its all about the robot and durring the off season make designs and stuff for next years robot. None of them ever look to community service or other stuff like that. And why is everyone afraid of giving presentations?

[LightWaves1636]

Most of this is just personal stuff with my team

Safety Captain - My team would keep passing the job along and then when it reaches this one sophomore, he just tosses the button, this pissed me off how uncaring they were about it

Strategist - We consider it important, it's just the way our strategist gets treated on our team, well just the "boys" are mean to him which was truely unfair because he's just as important to the drive crew as the drivers, even the human player

Keeping the pit area clean - between matches and stratgizing, I would end up cleaning a majority of the pit, except when our coach gets to the pit first and then he starts cleaning it, this annoys me because we this sophomore that's there all the time and the only reason he wants to be there is to lay under the table and play his gameboy, bugged me evn more when he used the laptop cases as pillows, with the laptops still in them

Battery Changing - Drive crew had to keep taking care of it

Mascot - at the Colorado Regional, nobody wanted to do it which dissappointed me because our cheering section was like 5 people,

Drive Crew - now this is personal, it's because how practice day went for us, I told the drive crew to get sleep and eat healthy, unfortnately we had a bad practice day because nobody on the drive crew took care of themselves, except I tried to. I couldn't sleep at all because I was stuck with on of the parents and her snoring was loud, raspy, and annoying(I even went into the hall and still heard it-it's true, the media captain can vouch), so for practice day I go a half hour sleep(I didn't sleep the night before either because I had to finish some stuff before I went on the Atlanta trip). Our strategist was being harassed by the chassis driver, human element, captain, and extra person, so our strategist never got any sleep(This also pretty much says the human element and Chassis driver was awake all night as well). We get to practice, we concentrate, we can score, and we were all stressed out and over reacting to things. Luckily drive crew stepped it up and our assistant coach gave me and the media captain our room like it should have orginally been(Finally, sleep, I crashed and skipped swimming with the team).

Media Crew - They just don't get it, simply that.

It greatly irritated me(plus the 13 other people on the team, well plus the parents, and the coaches) at championships how this sophomore on our team just laid in our pit area to play his game boy and we would tell him to go away if he wants to do nothing and get in the way and he starts complaining how he can't play his gameboy in the pit area(yeah, especially when we had to fix the arm-well improve the strength and speed of it-and a couple of our team members tripped over his legs and cut themselves because he was lying underneath the table, he didn't even say sorry, he even yelled us to watch where we're going and wanted us to say sorry for stepping on his legs and distrubing his video gaming)

I guess, it's just that it didn't matter how improtant a person's job was on the team, it was that the job was taken for granted and that really dissappointed me.

[colin340]

the team's advisory
you can't imagine the stuff they have to do most of them put in so much time
and sleep
even on are team's that are both student lead and run
the team's advisory still has to do so much just to give the right first experience
we love you guys

[FunkyRatDemon]

Animation Team- They're the bud of all of our jokes, yet they finished on time (unlike our build team).

Opeartaions-If someones gone, people wonder why they;re not there. When they show, people give no gratitude.
(Operations is a team division for people who don't built the robot , yet assist in all other duties like Field Construction and Clean Up.)

Mascot-People don't realize how hot these outfits get!

Chairmans-People think that building a robot is all that matters...

Public Relations- Many people thaink that money grows on trees, yet I beg to differ.

Website Team-Do these people even need to show up? They add pics to the web...WOW!(sarcasm)

[1359th Scalawag]

I would have to say the human player was the least recognized. The human player can very well be one of the most important roles on the drive team because without him, you wouldn't get tubes so easily. Because the common perception on my team is that anybody could have done it our human player didn't get much recognition but getting the tubes onto the feild in the right spot can save tons of time and be that little thing that wins the match.

This year, I was the strategist. On my team, I got enough recognition to satisfy but I dont think people understand how important the strategist is. Good strategies are what win championships and I would say that the strategist has the most stressfull job. While the drivers may only have 2 minutes of stress every 10 minutes, the strategist has to work in-between matches with alliance members to create the best possible strategy. Then a match comes and the second it's over, you start again.
The only times I had any rest during the Portland and Sacramento regionals was during lunch and after all our matches were done. It's not as easy as you'd think.

As for the Safety Person, our safety person had alot of recognition. She was by far the most spirited person on our team and was constantly walking through the pits saying "Arr, dont forget your safety glasses, mateys!" For Friday, she made thank-you posters for all the volenteers and they awarded her "Safety Person of the Day" She was mentioned in an article about us in our local newspaper. She was probably given more recognition than any other member on our team.

[mizscience]

Originally Posted by 1359th Scalawag

I would have to say the human player was the least recognized. The human player can very well be one of the most important roles on the drive team because without him, you wouldn't get tubes so easily. Because the common perception on my team is that anybody could have done it our human player didn't get much recognition but getting the tubes onto the feild in the right spot can save tons of time and be that little thing that wins the match.

I definately agree. When the average FIRSTer thinks of a drive team, they mention the two drivers and the mentor, often overlooking the human player as an insignificant role in the grand scheme of things. Human player is definately one of the more undervalued jobs on a team...

[Po-ser]

Definitely the person who keeps the pit clean.

This year we made the job much easier for this person and for ourselves. Check out what my co-captain made!

http://rassi.ath.cx/stuypulse/view_p...eek-1&id=Tools

[MWTrek]

I think the most undervalued job on our team is the job done by our main mentor. He had to make sure he knew where everyone was and the game plan for the rest of the day while performing his duties in the pit. This year we had very few non-engineering mentors attend our Atlanta. The job that these two mentors did was invaluable but i think was overlooked my most if not all of the people on our team. Nice work!!!

[Bill_Hancoc]

ill Nth the person who cleans the pit, im usually that person, but in a way i kind of enjoy it. I get to spend time around the robot and tools which i both enjoy very much.
Then the People who do all the planning fro like hotels and such.

[Rapt0r9]

Probably electrical. This includes the battery people and programmers. Our teams big problem is our tendency to wait to the last minute to get things done. So mechanical is finishing their work the first day of competition and electrical has to scramble to wire everything in the course of an hour. Overall it isn't that bad, but the head of our electrical sub team would have you think otherwise.

During competition one of the mentors would yell to him, "Is electrical done yet?" evey three minutes. He had a assortment of repsonses, but the one I remember was, "Mechanicall had 400 hours, we have 4."

[geeknerd99]

SORRY, LATE NIGHT POST. (I shot photos of 5 soccer games an hour away today. It's been a long day, but this is a topic I'd really like to share my thoughts about)

Originally Posted by Rapt0r9

Probably electrical.

(omitted for space considerations)

During competition one of the mentors would yell to him, "Is electrical done yet?" evey three minutes. He had a assortment of repsonses, but the one I remember was, "Mechanicall had 400 hours, we have 4."

Mentors: "How's the electrical team doing so far?"

Me: "We can't really wire the robot up if we don't have a robot to work on"

Mentor: "You always say that. Have you guys accomplished anything else?"

Laura: "Yeah. We redesigned the electronics board, AGAIN, since you guys redesigned the frame. AGAIN."

(this marked the 7th or 8th time we'd redesigned it, wire layouts and everything)

Sometimes, I really feel that the people that are truly devoted to the team are the ones most undervalued. This includes me and my electronics/programming team, and everyone else in the computer lab, which includes the CAD people (oh, are they useful, I can't thank them enough), and the animators. Alright, so I still don't really see the point in doing the animation, but still, they put in A LOT of work this year. I just don't reall get how it fits in with the rest of our team.

While we're on the topic of undervaluing things, I really feel that a recurring problem on teams is the mechanical guys not appreciating the rest of the team. Like, on the Saturday before ship, the entire electrical and CAD/Animation teams showed up bright and early at 8AM, after about a 20 minute drive for many of us, and the first shreds of the rest of the team showed up at 2PM. No joke. I don't think I've ever been more pissed at my teammates than that day before. I guess it was the following tidbit that set me off:

Mentor: "So, what electrical stuff did you guys accomplish?"

Me : "Actually, we had to pull everyone even from CAD and animation to help build the robot, since we have to have a robot to work on first. Where on earth were you guys?" (Note that this quote has been translated to a more CD-friendly version)

Mentor: "Sleeping!" (In this I-Don't-Care-That-We-Ship-Out-Tuesday manner)

Me:

And one last bit before I go to bed (I'm really just rambling here, bear with me), I really hate the people that don't show up the entire build season, maybe turn a few screws with a few days before ship, and then think they can drive the robot better than the team-leadership designated drive team. Especially considering that this year we ran mecanum. Driving is hard work. It's fun, but it's also no fun when the entire team blames you for failure. People with the ambition that Oooh! Me! I wanna drive! usually don't realize this.

I choose to accept the role as driver not because it's like a real-live video game that I really wanna play. I drive because a part of my soul is in that robot, a part that apparently the leadership recognized as strong potential. Believe me. If I wasn't recommended to drive (or the best driver, or the person that designed everything related to the driving, for that matter), I wouldn't drive on field unless someone had a gun to my head. Sometimes it's great, but it's actually more depressing than fun.

Alright, sleepy time.

Long story short: Most undervalued people: CAD, animators, and programming/electrical. Most undervaluing people: the people that claim to "build" the robot as their job (isn't it everyone's job?) and the people that never show up/do anything.

[Alan Anderson]

Originally Posted by geeknerd99

Me: "We can't really wire the robot up if we don't have a robot to work on"

I don't know about that. Lots of teams seem to have been able to develop a self-contained "electrical box" module that holds everything except the motors and sensors. We haven't gone quite to that level yet, but our drivebase last year was designed to give us a large, flat area inside it for the electrical components. We actually wired most of the 'bot a week before the drivebase itself was ready, and we built a duplicate electrical "floor" for our planned practice 'bot at the same time.

[KathieK]

The most undervalued person on a team? The one who makes sure the team is fed.

And the one who arranges the travel plans so that the bus arrives on time, the hotel is selected, the airline tickets are all set to go with everyone's correct legal names on them.

And the ones who get up at 3:30 in the morning in order to get you to your facility to make the 4:30 a.m. bus that is taking you to a competition.

And the one who puts together the hospitality baskets and places them in the restrooms so we all don't stink at regionals.

It's the wife/husband/family of the mentor who acknowledges that this program is making changes in people's lives, so they let them go to work on the robot program for hundreds of hours a year.

It's the employee at some big corporation that writes the check that is mailed to your team leader that gets deposited into your team bank account before you even see it. It's the school secretary that writes the check to FIRST so that you get your kit of parts. It's the custodian that makes sure you can stay late and work on the bot during build season. It's the family that reads about your pasta dinner in the paper and decides to support your fundraising efforts.

And the people who are there working/volunteering in the background YEAR-ROUND to ensure that the four FIRST programs and their competitions will be of the best quality that we can make them. And taking all of their vacation days to go to training, and give presentations and demos, and staff the events. And are volunteering to come in the Wednesday before to help set up, and are staying long past everyone has vacated the pits on Saturday to break the field down.

The "team" is not just the students and the mentors. They are the tip of the iceberg. Acknowledge your "undervalued" team members and say thank you. Write a personal letter to your sponsor and tell them what being in FIRST means to you. Say thank you to your school administration, treat your custodians to dinner. Find out who is on your Regional Planning Committee and let them know how much you appreciate what they do.

[pakratt1991]

fund raising,
most of the work out fund raising team does is behind close doors to most of the members of our team. all the team knows is that they have money, not how many businesses we visited, hours of presentations made, hours spent preparing and practicing for our presentations. It takes allot of time that most members don't connect with.