I was just wondering, do any other schools have exams during build season? ours are this coming week and we dont have meetings at all during exams to promote ;studying’ for them. this is pretty annoying because it gives us 5 weeks instead of 6.
also, because its during the winter, do any of you teams up north have problems with winter weather preventing you from getting to the shop or whatever to work on the robot?
we had our exams this past week. Basically we just kept meeting at normal times, we just encouraged kids to study and that it isnt necessary to come to every meeting, but we also encouraged them to keep in contact and contribute when they could.
Being from the north, I’d have to say we really haven’t had much problem with snow and ice. We have left an hour early due to ice storms but other than that, no biggy. We even met on a snowday last year I believe. Our city does a pretty good job of keep the roads plowed and salted, and most people have cars that can take it. (the winter)
We are in virginia, so its in that geographic area where the first snow of the season, although its an inch thick max, takes all the bread and milk off the shelves and closes the schools. Obviously the roads are okay to go to school for robotics meetings, but i doubt the school would let us in. One other issue our team has is that we are a magnite school. There are a group of 3 guys from powhatan county, a good 45min to 1hr drive from school in richmond, so they have trouple coordinating being at meetings and such. Because we have other rural counties represented as well, snow could become a real problem for us if we actually got any.
We have midterms from Tuesday to Friday this week, in the mornings. There is no school in the afternoons for the same reason, and school activities are technically not supposed to meet during those afternoons. Last year we met after exams anyway, until late afternoon.
ya our are coming up in 2 weeks the 29, 30, and 31 of January. We do not have meetings the weekend before, to promote studying. But we do meet till about 5 or so on the week days still. Seems to work for us here.
More than likely if you live up north, snow/ice is a very normal, “no biggie” occurance. (If the roads aren’t closed due to a state of emergency, travel is never a problem)
Heh, we have finals during the first week of build, which is always quite stressful because (a) we’re worrying about finals all during kickoff and (b) thinking about robotics all during finals.
We have always been fortunate enough for our semester exams to be before the holiday break. We have a new state law that takes effect the 2007-2008 school year that prohibits schools from starting before 14 days prior to Labor Day which means that 1st semester exams will be January 15-17 for Orange County Schools – 10 days after kickoff. BUT, following exams we will have a 4-day weekend.
All of the Canadian teams in Ontario are faced with this dilemma - and our exams are a week and a half, so we only get 4.5 weeks of build time, which makes it quite stressful, on top of the stress from the actual exams
We just had exams over the last week. (half day every day)
We didn’t get much of a turnout through the beginning of the week, but our meetings on Friday and today had great turnout of students, as we all don’t have any real school work over this weekend!
Our district, to accommodate the new law passed in Texas, that school can not start before the fourth Monday in August, will be having finals 3 weeks after the new year next year. Which means the first week after holidays we have nothing, than the second week after the Kickoff, we have our exams. But the good think about that is we also have half days and if you are in certain classes, you do not have to even show up for your exams, but since you guys do not have Robotics during that time, I wonder what will happen to us? Maybe start early and finish early because we all get off early?
Pavan.
Word to that… although I sort of know that we would still end up in the same kind of time crunches we do now even if we DID have that extra week.
Our finals are this coming week. We’re taking Sunday and Monday off because just about everyone has a final that day. Aside from that, meetings just about every day.
As for snow. It did snow lightly yesterday but we all ignored it on the ground today.
Even when it does snow badly, we still have meetings.
We had our finals this past Wed-Fri, with Friday being a half day, so we ended up gaining four build hours yesterday. Also, school was out for MLK day on Monday, so we just moved it to last Tuesday. And then we’re closed for in-service day this Monday, so we gain another 8 1/2 hours. Pretty much, we actually got more done during exam week.
Same here. We had blizzards during the last two meetings, but it didn’t bother us one bit.
Yah but its cool i only have like two anyway theyre uber easy to web page design and english.
I had mine this past week. Thankfully, my first 4 periods of the day are my core classes, and then I have band, lunch and then two periods of photo. Thus, with two exams a day, I had two days of core exams, my photo exam (which I was allowed to design myself), and then my band exam. And then of course, my lunch exam, which is a speed-eating contest. Just kidding.
Unfortunately, the shop still didn’t open until 4, but after Wednesday, I was there from open to close.
I guess my exams weren’t that bad this year. Last two years they really sucked the life out of me. Guess that means I failed at least half of them then.
We always have them the first week after kickoff. It’s really quite annoying. I think our team attempted to have meetings during midterms a couple years ago but this year we decided to not have them because no one shows up anyway, so no work really gets done.
I wasn’t aware so many teams had midterms during the build season.
On Thursday I finally finished final exams. It’s miserable not to be able to work on the robot because you have to study for finals; it’s even worse how when I am trying to study I can think of nothing but robots. I envy the teams that have final exams before build season; I bet they also have good robots, too.
Sad part was, I didn’t even study (I know, I know) but I feel I’ve done pretty good. Only one I don’t feel so confident in is Biology, and I hate that class.
Yup not going to lie there. It does manage to be a problem. But our teacher will be in the shop anytime he isn’t supervizing an exam, so if we don’t have one we can go in and get some work done!