"Instructions are for people who don't know what they're doing."

[EricVanWyk]

As a mentor, how do you ensure that your students read the manuals?

It has become painfully apparent to me that many of us in the FIRST community live by Bob the Builder's phrase "Instructions are for people who don't know what they're doing." I know I have been guilty of it myself in the past, and I understand the allure to doing something without looking at the manual.

However, manuals are written for a reason: They are not created to satisfy someone's desire to feel important, they are created to ensure safe and successful operation of the devices.

The new control system has a lot of safety features intended to protect against mis-wiring, but protecting against some things are simply infeasible. For a quick example, the chassis of the camera is grounded and therefore must be insulated from the robot chassis.

We need to work to change the phrase to "Instructions are for people who want to do it right."

One of my mentors once told me that "Everything is easy and makes sense, so long as you do it right the first time and don't screw it up." He was specifically speaking about RF, but I find it translates well to just about everything I do.