Like the title says i’m feeling so burned out this build season. I am on a smaller team but every meeting it feels like less than half of the team shows up and no work is ever getting done. I want to do everything I can to help and I’ve been trying my best to pull my weight and some, but I don’t think we will be ready in time for our first comp. We are way behind the deadlines we set at the start of the season and I don’t know how much more I can do before it’s to much. I’m struggling with this season since I am choosing to do work for the team over my school work and have skipped shifts at my job to go to meetings. I love FRC so much but it’s been hard this year.
I’m going to say this line really bugs me. I suggest you take a night or two off from the team, catch up on school work, do a job shift or three. FRC is not the be-all and end-all of existence.
I’m sorry you have to go through this and I’m hoping your team is able to pull through for your first competition. However, if things are so frustrating and stressful to the point where you feel you’re not learning and having fun anymore (both of which are crucial to FRC), take a break. Trust me, it’ll be worth it.
It might a little upsetting not seeing your robot at its full potential at your first comp, but it won’t be as painful as dragging yourself through these next few weeks and pushing past your boundaries, especially if the robot isn’t complete regardless.
FRC is an incredible program with so much to learn and space to grow but it is never more important than your health, school, and relationships. It’s clearly infringing on your health and school, so I’ll reiterate: Take a break!
In a couple years, you’ll most likely find that burning out so hard to build a robot wasn’t as valuable as it seems now, so it’s 100% okay to take a break, even at the expense of robot performance.
TLDR: Take a break
You can DM me if you’d like to discuss further, I’ve had issues with burnout as well.
I was going to grab the (I believe @mrnoble’s) list of priorities in a high school student’s life from the energy drink thread, but it appears that thread has been deleted. Nonetheless, school should always come before robotics.
I would advise you to take a full mental health day - don’t go to work/school/robotics. Instead, get lots of sleep, cook + eat a good meal if you haven’t had the time to over the last few weeks, go outside, and don’t work. Aside from that, continue to focus on school/work over robotics. On the technical side, if you feel like your robot is going to be impossible to finish, cut back on it as much as possible to get something done before your first competition without destroying your mental health.
I’m not sure what his priority list is, but I suggest these for my team:
Your health and wellbeing
Your family
School
Your choice - this is the first spot you could put FRC
Without your own health and wellbeing you will not be able to give your best to anything else. That’s why it is in the top spot.
For many high school students, their family provides shelter, transportation, and a support net for when things get tough.
High school students are just that; students first. Focusing on your classwork, and grades is your primary responsibility as a student. For our team, you cannot even be a member without attending school, and you cannot travel with the team without meeting grade minimums.
I agree with everyone saying take a break but I wanted to specifically point out this part. Please don’t feel pressured by the posts you see on CD and other media with teams that are already driving robots / finished with XYZ / posting multi-note autos.
It is incredibly hard to build/“be ready” that fast and even accomplish moderately ambitious deadlines your team sets for itself unless everyone on the team puts forth a ton of effort. Some teams and/or some years just don’t work out like that, and it’s fine.
(1675 has had to try-out / choose drivers on practice day multiple times before…)
Sniped, good job. I was just about to link it, thanks for getting there faster. That thread is full of great reasons and methods for a good balance of work and life
This is normal for every team I have been on, even for teams that had try-outs. During build season even if everyone showed up only half or less need to be there, just make sure it’s the right people. A programmer or 2 and the build team + a designer should be the 2nd quarter of build season about now. Soon it should be the programming team, a person on build, and a designer.
Everything everyone else has said is very accurate and you should definitely take that advice.
On a more technical note, now would be a good time to reevaluate those deadlines and your priorities. Considering what you’ve been able to do so far, take a look at what you think you’ll be able to get done before competition and set a new time line. That’s probably going to mean reducing the overall capabilities you’re aiming for, but it’s better to actually have those capabilities than to get to 75% of everything you were trying to do. You can also take a look at some of the various public sources to see if there’s designs you can take and adapt to save you some design work.
Those mentioning the order of priorities are right, but here’s some other advice:
Limit your robot functionality to what you can actually get done, and do well. It sounds like your team is doing too much for its capabilities and needs to pare back on desired specifications in order to be good at fewer things.
Agreed. This year, I’ve spent the first half of the build season mostly at home (checking in for about 20 minutes to monitor the build each day). Most of the code up to this point can be drafted at home, where stress is generally a minimum.
Heyyy, I’m so sorry you have to go through this, but as everyone is saying, your school and work are always the priority, last year I made the choice to prioritize my team above everything else, school, family, friends, parties, etc. Believe me, it’s not worth it, even though we finished our robot and it was amazing, I kept dreaming and dreaming of what our robot could achieve in a competence, and it is heartbreaking when the reality doesn’t met your expectations, and seeing everything you gave up to fulfill this “dream”, as I said, believe me, it’s not worth it.
Also you have the fortune to be in the USA where there are FRC teams in most of the states, remember that FIRST is for you to learn and most importantly have fun, two things unfortunately your not doing on this team. Maybe try searching another team close to you, that could lead your team through the season, either with resources, knowledge, even a couple of hands on your design or your code, or anything that could help your team go through the season
Hope everything gets better and know that there is a big community here just to help you!
Choose 2 things to prioritize on improving on your team or your robot from last season and stick to focusing on those. For example, this year I chose to focus on our Limelight placement being prioritized early on, and our mechanisms being better tuned for closed loop position control. Other things go into making a great robot, but these are two things that I am capable of focusing on within my team that will improve upon last year’s robot. They have dependencies, but at least for the most part it is more granular than “Make a better robot than last year”
Try to find specific root causes of things or root sources of performance that you can work on.
You cannot control everything all at once, but you can choose your battles and be successful in them. This is always easier said than done, and even 14 years out of high school I still struggle to do this, but it is important to try.
That sounds like good year to year advice, but I don’t know how much it helps with getting through the rest of the season. At this point where it sounds like the season goals have been established figuring out how to get them down to an achievable target is going to need to happen. I definitely like the concept, but I don’t feel that it can really be applied here.
This season has been hectic for me as well. I recently just got over my recent case of mentor burn out. While I love FRC it is not an easy thing to do. (For both sides Mentor and Student)
I find it great to reach out not only to members of your community, but your mentors and friends. It was with their perspective that I was able to overcome my case of burnout.
It seems that you are over exerting yourself and I know that is a huge contributing factor to your feelings. I know you feel that if you are not there that the team will fall deeper into the void, but a mental health day is okay. As my mentor told me during my burnout, “Remember that the best thing for the team is you at your best.”
I will echo what many have said, FRC should not be your priority especially when it comes to school. The only thing that will result from this even more stress from being behind in school work. This will not help you.
In times like this I like to go back to the idea of FRC. Although the name is FIRST Robotics Competition, FRC was never about the Competition. This program was built to to give students the opportunity to learn and grow in STEAM fields. Remember “Not every student is going to contribute the same amount to the robot” (As quoted from my mentor) This is okay.
No matter what you show up with to competition the door is never closed for you. I remember last year a team in our area ranked 7th as a drive base bot at an event, they knew what they what they were bringing to the table and made the best of it.
All and all, take a break and when you are refreshed and ready to come back, work to make this experience a positive one.
Thank you all so much. Thank you for all of the advice and thank you to everyone who reached out to me. It means so much more than you know. All of this support reminded me why I love FRC and how much I love the amazing community around it.
I will be taking a full mental health day like some of you suggested to reset and start prioritizing my well-being. After that I can return to my team and focus more on learning and the enjoyment that comes with it.
Again, thank you so much for all of the support, resources, and empathy.
First, I cannot tell all those who have already responded how relieved I am to see that we are all saying the same thing. Robotics is a 4th place activity. I have told my team this since we founded 17 years ago.
@anonburner take a night or day or whatever you can off. If you feel like you can’t take off, leave early. It will be there when you go back. If you aren’t ready for your first comp, I understand that it will be disappointing. There will be teams there that will help and be happy to do so. This may not be your best robot, but this is about so much more than the robot.
Ahead of next season (assuming you aren’t a senior this year), look at how you need to prioritize your time for your well-being. Heck, do this even if you are a senior. This is a part of life that we all have to learn and re-learn sometimes. If your teammates start questioning you, gently remind them that it is a team effort.
I totally get where you’re coming from, feeling burned out is tough, especially when you’re juggling so much for your team. It might not sound like the perfect advice, but it’s completely okay if you’re not fully prepared for a competition. My team had a similar experience last year where we ended up building most of our robot just the night before the comp. We struggled a lot during the matches, spending most of our time trying to fix things. We lost almost all our matches but won the very last one!
Looking back, that competition taught me more about programming and robotics than the whole build season did. It pushed me out of my comfort zone and, believe it or not, gave us some really fun memories despite the losses. We still crack up about this moment that was a result of a hastily thrown together auto.
After that, we were super motivated to improve. We worked hard between competitions and by the last one, we were moving in every round and even made it to the playoffs!
So, it’s okay to feel overwhelmed and not ready. You’re not alone in this. Remember, it’s about getting back up more times than you fall. Hang in there, and take care of yourself too. Your dedication is truly admirable, but don’t forget your well-being is important as well.