Recently our team won an invitation to Atlanta through FTC. I am one of the mentors for the team, and very committed to the team’s sucess.
The problem is I am currently in University and I have a final exam on the same day. The University I am attending is the University of Waterloo in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada which is a fairly large supporter of FIRST. I was wondering if anyone (particularily from Waterloo) ever deferred an exam to attend a FIRST event, and how to best go about approaching it.
I recently deferred a business midterm to attend a regional event, but the policy on that is far more relaxed.
Not in college yet, but I would say you are playing with fire… Not saying I wouldn’t do it, it’s called FIRST for a reason (the acronym is just a cover story)
I’d just like to add that obviously University comes first before FIRST mentoring. However, before I confer with my professor and possibly the administration here at Waterloo, I wanted to get some advice and/or previous situations.
edit: Good Idea! to take the exam early. Never thought of that, I will try to bring that up as an option. It may cause some problems though, because they would have to write a specific exam just for me to prevent me from relaying information to other students.
My current options are:
write the exam and not go
ask to defer it to a later date.
ask to defer it to a later semester (has been done)
I know with my experiences in college. Most professors won’t have a problem letting you hand in work early or letting you take the test early as long as you give them enough notice. You obviously can’t go up 2 days before you have to leave and expect them to be lenient.
However, it might be a little different with a final exam. Let us know how it works out.
I have a point of data. I postponed my MGMT 371 final exam in Spring 2006 to attend the Championship. The professor here gave me an incomplete for the course, and I made it up in the fall when he could round up all of the students who had deferred the exam for whatever reason.
Granted, I made sure that this was in the cards from the first week of classes. YMMV.
Most of the mentors of team 190 have to reschedule at least one of their finals to attend our first regional in Manchester. The best strategy from what I’ve found is to make sure the professor knows as far in advance as possible, then make sure the professor knows you are flexible. If you are mentoring through UW, have the faculty member you are working through write you a letter to let the prof know its legitimate. If you are going through a school, have the teacher write you a “note” on official letterhead.
The most important thing is to make sure the professor knows what the situation is as soon as possible and you need to be as flexible as possible. In my experience at WPI, no professor has refused to reschedule an exam if notified ASAP.
I agree with what everyone has said previously.
This year, the Midwest Regional, where I volunteered, was set for the date I had one of my midterms. I let my professor know during the first few weeks of class that I would be missing that day, and I was worried about the midterm. She was extremely nice about it, and let me take it early.
Like people have said, just make sure you tell your professor about it early (this coming week would probably be best), and remind them early and often about your absence and need for special accommodations.
Well, I’ll just echo what everyone else has said. TALK to your professor. Most of the time they’re going to be flexible. I’ve done both take the exam early and take it a couple of days later. Most of the time though if given the choice I’ve chosen to take it early because then I don’t get too far behind on other things and I don’t have to think about it at nationals. I have never had a problem with a professor that we’ve not been able to work through.
I have been lucky enough that most of my professors do not mind giving me the exam earlier or later. I usually take it early so I am free from any work at regionals or Atlanta. However, the policies are different for every college. Good luck.
Hrmmm i always wondered when this question would be asked. And here is my answer:
If the teacher likes the program they will let you do it, if not you are kinda stuck.
But yes i have done this for about 12 exams so far in college (about 3 a year)… Typically our team has a great way of scheduling the regionals on the same weeks i have exams.
But as for how to handle it, the first person you want to talk to is the professor. Sit down with him.her and explain the situation, and also explain FIRST to him/her. If this does not work, and you would still like to go, you can always talk to the Dean of the department (I’m not sure what they call them in Canada but they are the person in charge of the department that your professor teaches for). Once again you can explain the situation. Once it gets to here you are pretty much stuck, going much farther up in the “food chain” could anger the professor, and im not sure if trying to go much higher would benefit you at all.
This year I only had to move one exam, but I took care of that early in the semester. I met with my professor, explained the FIRST program briefly and my involvement in it, and then asked what options were available with the exam that was set for Friday. Be open and respectful in your communication. Don’t be demanding - ask what you can do, not how you want it to be.
My Thursday morning exam, however, was immovable, and that’s just something I will have to work around.
Thank you so much for providing advice. I went to go talk to the professor, and explained about FIRST and our team, and he was surprisingly nice about deferring the exam.
Thanks again! I couldn’t have done it without all your advice!
I can certainly see the draw of skipping school to go to a FIRST competition. I almost did this for the Boilermaker Regional. However, then I got to thinking that my being a mentor is about more then helping them when they ask. It is also about being a role model. What you do should depend on what kind of message you want to get acrossed to your team. The message I decided to present was this. “School always comes first. No matter what, do the work and then have the fun.” I missed 1 day of the regional for classes. Got a ride there for 1 day. And missed the finals due to lack of a ride. I think I could have helped my team more with the competition by being there all three days. However by setting the example I did, I believe that I helped my team out more with life.
The main thing is: What message do you want to get acrossed to your team? Maybe your message is: Put the team above all else. Maybe it is like mine: Put school before all else. Maybe it is something completely different. I don’t know.
Just a note to all mentors: Take your role seriously and mean everything you do. The students are watching and they are learning.
Sorry to all for the long post, I just had something I wanted to say.
