Limits on Team Hours

[Al Skierkiewicz]

Originally Posted by Andrew Schreiber

As someone who is in a significantly different "real world" I can say your mileage may vary.

My business is the exception to every rule. Although not a normal occurrence, TV has some pretty screwy hours. I normally work 6AM-2PM but that can change anytime including to an overnight shift the same day. When working big shows, I have started the day at 5 AM and been late for work the next day because I was still at the previous job. A typical Soundstage shoot day will begin at 7 or 8 with unloading of the band trucks, setting equipment on stage and audio setup. Rehearsal begins at 1PM, dinner 5 or 6 PM, tape at 8 PM. If the band is prepared and there is no need to restart, or record multiple takes, we will finish between 9 and 10PM and start packing the band to get them on the road. We will leave the place about 1 AM on a good night and I will be back at 6AM. If the band takes a long time, it might be midnight before we start packing the band. We are a union house and the contract provides for these hours with penalties, of course. Commercial shoots are sometimes pretty weird as well. If the product is brand new, has a hard release date and the marketing people want things just right, I have seen 50 carpenters building a set over the Labor Day weekend followed by four 16 hour days in a row to finish the shooting.

[IKE]

I like Tom's line of thinking, with regards to personal and parental responsibility, but I am ok with oversight as well.

I tend to side though with the school on this one. For instance the A/Bs you could have had are now D's (which can be improved to a B/Cs, but you will not get the A/Bs. Once the grades have slipped, and the student is kicked off the team (academic probation), it seems like a double whammy where a soft limit could have been in place. (Better learn to write a funny song to get into MIT.)

Maybe a good compromise would be to establish hours in a reasonable manner with a discussion. Instead of a hard limit, have several soft limits. If you exceed X hours a week, a call will go to your parents to verify that they are engaged in what is going on. If you excede Y hours in a month, an email will be sent to your teachers asking about your performance.

I like math so let's look at it from some numbers:

7x24=168 hrs/week. Assume students are in school 8am-3pm= 7hrsx5=35hrs. Assume 1hr for prep (shower and travel)=5-15 (10 avg.), Assume 7 hrs of sleep average=49
168-35-10-49 = 74 hours of available time. Throw in 1 hour of homework each night and you are down to 69 total hours per week for life outside of school and sleeping. So far we have not included the 3 T's of being a Teenager (TV, Tech (games or texting), and Talking on the phone).

We will call this 69 hours "life" as it is the timeframe where most students would say having a "life" happens.

For a 6 week period:
60 = 10/week which is typically a part time job like bagging groceries or a paper route. You are not around enough to understand how to run the store, but enough to do a meaningful job well. 10/69=14% of "life"
90 = 15/week Still part-time. Not a critical roll, but similar to game and practice schedule for many sports. This is roughly our "minimum" involvement on 33. 15/69=22% of "life"
120 = 20/week As Tom showed, this is a pretty involved student that could/should be able to be quite involved. This could be 4x3hour meetings plus 8 hours on Saturday. This seems like a pretty good goal for someone engaged. 20/69=29% of "life"
150 = 25/week This could be 4x4hour meetings plus 9 hours on Saturday. This is more inline with our "mentor" schedule. We will likely end up putting in more time, but this is typically what we have scheduled. 25/69=36% of "life"
180 = 30/week 30/69=43% of "life"
210 = 35/week many 40/week employees with paid breaks/lunch end up doing about this number of hours as a "Full-time employee". 35/69=51% of "life" (yes over 1/2 of your "life" is FRC for this timeframe)
240 = 40/week "Full-time" employee 40/69=58% of "life"
300 = 50/week average. Likely comes from a 40/week schedule and lots of for a few of the weeks. 50/69=72% of "life"
360 = 60/week 60/69=87% of "life" Your family and friends forget who you are.

210 seems like a reasonable "soft limit" for people to get concerned and start calling teachers/parents. Probably shouldn't be a hard limit, but definitely something to take note of.

[Astrokid248]

Honestly, if your team members can't keep up their grades during season, they just shouldn't be on the team. Limiting the number of hours the team spends building the robot is not the solution to the problem. I know that my team generally spends about 400 hours working on the robot during the first six weeks and another 400 leading up to Championships. As one of those "integral team members" who have to stay longer, I know that it can get difficult. But it is humanly possible to get good grades, even straight A's in AP and college courses, while still putting in upwards of 800 hours of work over the semester. With regular grade checks over the build season and strict adherence to UIL rules (you fail a class, you're not on the team), your team should be able to excel in school and still build an amazing robot without limited work hours.

As a final note, you may want to let your administrators know that getting B's and C's while participating in FIRST robotics allows you to learn more and better prepares you for the future than getting straight A's and not participating in any sort of robotics (or other extracurricular activities).

[MadeAtMidnight]

Originally Posted by Astrokid248

As a final note, you may want to let your administrators know that getting B's and C's while participating in FIRST robotics allows you to learn more and better prepares you for the future than getting straight A's and not participating in any sort of robotics (or other extracurricular activities).

Doesn't do much for college scholarships though. Several schools can give full rides to those with good ACT/SAT scores and 4.0 grade point. Doesn't happen if grades slip down. If cutting back a few hours makes a difference, saving several thousands of dollars should be a concern also. Just my .02.

[HashemReza]

Originally Posted by Astrokid248

...But it is humanly possible to get good grades, even straight A's in AP and college courses, while still putting in upwards of 800 hours of work over the semester. With regular grade checks over the build season and strict adherence to UIL rules (you fail a class, you're not on the team), your team should be able to excel in school and still build an amazing robot without limited work hours.

You're right, you can certainly put in all of the hours and still be a successful student and team member. But at what cost?

The limit would help people who don't have (or have lost) a sense of balance in their life. They're the people who spend 80% of their time working on robotics, 20% on school, and everything else seems to fall by the wayside. The difficult part is that it's often times hard to tell that you're spending too much time as it happens.

Do I support a hard limit? No, not a sweeping one. However, I do believe that it should be at the discretion of leadership, certainly including team mentors, to impose a limit on students. There isn't one solution for every team, but if each team takes regulation into their own hands then the situation could certainly be alleviated.

[Andrew Schreiber]

Originally Posted by MadeAtMidnight

Doesn't do much for college scholarships though. Several schools can give full rides to those with good ACT/SAT scores and 4.0 grade point. Doesn't happen if grades slip down. If cutting back a few hours makes a difference, saving several thousands of dollars should be a concern also. Just my .02.

Yup, I missed a significantly higher scholarship bracket because my grades were too low. Grades matter. Grades matter a lot.

I will, however, agree that while it is possible to get good grades while putting in 200+ hours it is a stupid thing to do. If you are working 400hrs in 6 weeks you are doing something wrong. Perhaps you need to scale back on what you want to do or perhaps you need to delegate more. Either way, 400 hrs is ridiculous.

[Chris27]

Originally Posted by Andrew Schreiber

Grades matter. Grades matter a lot.

Grades do matter but they are definitely not the most important thing. Frankly a ton of kids leave high school with a 4.0 GPA. Having high grades doesn't make a person special, however, the leadership skills and the experiences that can be gained through the FIRST program definitely can. While job hunting having FIRST on my resume gathered much more attention than my GPA. I found that a lot of the younger recruiters were FIRSTers themselves.

[Dale]

Having a cap known to all up front has an advantage in resource planning. The team won't be able to assume that a few ultra dedicated members are going to save the day by dedicating their lives and grades to the effort. If you know the cavalry isn't going to come, you teach everyone how to ride a horse and shoot a gun.

Just monitoring semester grades isn't enough. Since the build season is only six weeks, the effects of weeks of minimal sleep and sloppy homework might not be apparent until you're well into the build season. There's no mechanism at most schools to officially report grade drops over such a short period of time. It would have to be up to the teachers to feed back individual assignment results in some sort informal manner.

[Andrew Schreiber]

Originally Posted by Chris27

Grades do matter but they are definitely not the most important thing. Frankly a ton of kids leave high school with a 4.0 GPA. Having high grades doesn't make a person special, however, the leadership skills and the experiences that can be gained through the FIRST program definitely can. While job hunting having FIRST on my resume gathered much more attention than my GPA. I found that a lot of the younger recruiters were FIRSTers themselves.

No, not the most important thing they are not something that can be ignored. For me it made the difference between not paying anything for college and 8-10 grand a year. Because I slacked off and thought grades weren't important. Yes extracurriculars are important but having a ton of them and poor grades just shows an utter lack of time management skills. Realize though, we are talking about two different things now. College scholarships and job applications are drastically different things.

[JaneYoung]

I would venture to guess that build season for FRC impacts the other classes that the students on teams attend. Attention-wise, grade-wise, study-wise, attendance-wise. What the cap would (hopefully) do would be to provide an opportunity for the students on the team to bring a little bit of balance into their tight schedules, allowing for some semblance of sanity and attention to courses and schedules outside the realm of build.

I'm not convinced that the majority of teenagers who have access to so many methods of social communication and networking at their fingertips, use wise judgment in time management regarding balancing their studies and build and the other aspects of their lives such as family life and extracurriculars. It's asking a lot for not only the students but also for the mentors - to use wise judgment in finding the balance and in role modeling that balance.

Jane

[Chris27]

Originally Posted by Andrew Schreiber

College scholarships and job applications are drastically different things.

I'll take my dream job over a scholarship any day of the week. I'm just saying in five years when you look back at what you
have achieved, your grade on that calc test isn't going to matter. Your efforts are better spent on things that will matter. I'm
not saying to bomb that calc test but its better to keep a healthy perspective on the things that matter in life rather than fretting
over losing a 4.0 gpa.

[Bob Steele]

Originally Posted by Dale

Having a cap known to all up front has an advantage in resource planning. The team won't be able to assume that a few ultra dedicated members are going to save the day by dedicating their lives and grades to the effort. If you know the cavalry isn't going to come, you teach everyone how to ride a horse and shoot a gun.

Just monitoring semester grades isn't enough. Since the build season is only six weeks, the effects of weeks of minimal sleep and sloppy homework might not be apparent until you're well into the build season. There's no mechanism at most schools to officially report grade drops over such a short period of time. It would have to be up to the teachers to feed back individual assignment results in some sort informal manner.

For our team we have a special Academics Mentor Coach... she is vital to the team as she keeps an eye on the current grade as well as any tendancies that a student is exhibiting... Is their work suffering?
Did an A student drop to an A- student or a B student...What assignments are coming?
This is a big job and before this year it was difficult to achieve...

In years past we always had a few students that would lose eligibility on the team...
This year we maintained eligibility for 100% of the team members.

This was due to this system and our team study sessions that occurred every day we had an evening meeting.

It takes diligence by both mentors/coaches and students to make sure that academics are taken care of.

I agree that having FIRST on a resume is important... however... if you don't maintain grades and keep your GPA up.... the admissions people won't even be looking at those resumes....

I think we all know that students ( or anyone for that matter) will always do things that are more interesting and stimulating to them... The trap some students fall into is that robotics is so much fun... and in many cases.... it seems more relevant....more real life....so they devote themselves to it. Unfortunately many high school classes don't seem to have the same relevance...depending on your teacher...

Nothing wrong with this... but they need to have balance...
Family, Academics and Robotics... all need that balance.

It takes a lot of work to do this... it simply can't be done by instituting a "rule" that you can't spend more than XXX hours....for some students.... 10 hours a week would be too much...
for others ... it could be more.... or less...

Everyone needs to be involved... coaches, mentors, parents AND students....
It takes a village to raise a robotics student...

Please excuse that reference to a cliched phrase... but it actually does fit...

[Lil' Lavery]

Originally Posted by Tom Line

I must heartily disagree. Why haven't the concerned faculty of the students whose grades have slipped contacted the parents?[cut for brevity]

First off, how do we know they didn't contact the parents?

I agree with your general opinion that it should be a matter of personal (and parental) responsibility. However, that hasn't succeeded to this point, as some students have been adversely impacted by the time they put in, and weren;t able to handle the responsibility given to them or balancing FIRST and the rest of their life. Rather than having this continue, sometimes it is the responsibility of the school to step in and try and ensure that these failures don't happen. Especially a selective private school with a history and reputation to uphold (such as the one in question).

[Chris is me]

Originally Posted by Lil' Lavery

I agree with your general opinion that it should be a matter of personal (and parental) responsibility. However, that hasn't succeeded to this point, as some students have been adversely impacted by the time they put in, and weren;t able to handle the responsibility given to them or balancing FIRST and the rest of their life. Rather than having this continue, sometimes it is the responsibility of the school to step in and try and ensure that these failures don't happen. Especially a selective private school with a history and reputation to uphold (such as the one in question).

Blanket policies for all students because a handful can't handle robotics? I'd like to think educational policies should be more individualized than that.

[smurfgirl]

Balance is important. Not all parts of your life necessarily need to have the face focus during all periods of time, but some overall balance should be maintained. It's incredibly different to find this balance- it's something you have to continually work at throughout your whole life.

Balance does fall in a different place for everyone, however, many people have trouble recognizing when they have lost control things, both as high school students and later on in life. It's understandable that if students' grades are starting to suffer, the school administration would like to place reasonable limits on how much time they can devote to robotics. Spending 300-400 hours in the shop over the course of a 6-week period is getting excessive, and probably unnecessary. One of my friends mentioned to me recently that work is like a gas- it expands to fill the amount of time you have to do it. I find that this can often be true. Try to keep things in perspective- is logging 300 hours during build season really necessary or healthy? Try to be more efficient- use the time you do have in the shop wisely, and remember that you need to leave time focus on other things in life too.