whats homework?.. i do it all at school…
Remember that if any regionals or Atlanta is not during a vacation, You are probably going to have to get your teachers to sign off for you to go. If you aren’t getting good grades, they probably wont sign. IT also is usually the same with parents!
I take it by your concerns to school you are a rookie to FIRST. FIRST is made to influence us young adults to go into science and math based careers. I know speaking for myself and most other future engineers u will want to take a lot of math and scienc classes at your school, your school might also have a drafting or design class you will want to look at. Ask you teachers if you can use robotics as a project for a grade or perhaps even extra credit. And if the teacher is into your ideas you will be surprised by how well you can do in some classes. You can even turn in you teams chairman’s report to your english teacher and see what she thinks and tell het that you were one of the main ones to write it. Most of your classes can be used hand in hand with FIRST. I hope I can get backed up on this but that truly is what FIRST is about, being abnle to use your skills you already know and have learned from school and bettering themwith robotics. Ask your teachers what you can do to make up assignments while you are on trips and pick up flyers and adds about place you went to on regional trips. And if worst comes to worst just try hard and ask your mentors, I gurantee that if a mentor cant help you with your school work then a fellow student could. Teams that i have talked to have physic majors, engineers, teachers, and more all these people can and will help. If it werent for the mentors most of us wouldnt be involved.
I think that a lot of people have touched on the main way to keep grades up while at the same time successfully participating on a FIRST team: Priorities.
While it seems simple, having your priorities straight is the key. If you have never really thought about priorities, writing them down can help. It allows you to really see everything you do.
To me, grades come FIRST, period. However, during build season, generally I get by by ‘riding the edge,’ working just hard enough to get an A- or so. However, as many people have mentioned, don’t miss too much FIRST. It is really an amazingly educational program that will teach you more about engineering and science than most classes. Just look at some of the threads about ball distance. People are using a lot more math than they would learn in High School
Overall, just suck it up. Build season is really just 6 weeks. If you really feel overloaded, skip a day of FIRST, but try to just live without sleep for a couple weeks.
Allow me say first that I praise those of you with the opportunity to do your work at school. It is very much a blessing, take advantage of it.
I am one of the many students who can’t do that. My AP Bio, AP Chem, AP English, and AP Calc teachers don’t allow other homework in class usually, because the majority of the class period is taken up by lecturing or laboratory work (in the case of AP Bio and AP Chem). English teacher simply prefers attention over students doing homework, which I respect. Though not always AP, my schedule has been crammed since I started robotics.
But I don’t fail my classes. I don’t drop grades at Robotics season. Why?
Prioritizing only does so much. Do your work. Period. There is nothing much more I can say. Everyone does extracurriculars, everyone does “too many activities.” As someone said very well above, you can’t let the fear of an A- rather than an A deter you from enjoying experiences. Here is a lovely list of Genia strategies for maintaining As during build season (or whatever you want to maintain).
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Do your work during lunch, while eating. I can’t stress this enough. How long does it really take the average person to eat a sandwich, a piece of fruit or whatever, and take a drink? It shouldn’t take you that long unless you eat a gigantic lunch. Try to do homework while eating, and don’t spill. Multitasking is key.
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So you arrive at Robotics. Do homework there sometimes. I have done this number before: “Mentor A, I finished all the tasks we had agreed on for the meeting. Is it alright if I go do Calculus for a while?”. I’ve never had problems. Your mentors and teachers will understand if you take a short break at Robotics to do your work, especially if you’re otherwise productive. Eat your dinner while doing your work…it cuts down on idle time and puts you in the favor of mentors.
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Weekends solve a lot, but not everything. Yes, I know everyone likes to go out on Saturday night or Friday night. I certainly enjoy being with friends. Always get your “recreation time”, because if you miss out on too much of it you go insane. But do your homework on those awkward times when not much is going on, i.e., Sunday early morning (when you wake up or after you go do Sunday morning stuff).
If you understand your schedule, and if you’ve been getting good grades since the beginning with effective studying, you should have absolutely no problem maintaining them. No, I am not on the official “build team” but I put in similar time, on top of doing 4-5 hrs a day of science research.
You can do it if you work hard :). Good luck.
I do my homework at home, or I also do it during our seminar period that we have. Seminar is like a study hall for the whole school. I also do it at lunch. I don’t really have time to do it between school and robotics because I have sports after school. I always get it done before it is due!
its hard for me because i have 8.25 credits out of the possible 8 periods. i will miss some here and there. but my grades stay ok (in the b range) thats what works for me. i also am a tech guy for the school plays witch is a very simalar situation for two weeks straght i didint leave school till after 10 or so. my rule of thumb is if i dont have enough time, skip the hw for the classes with the highest grades. also lunch and between classes. i have gotten very good at walking and writeing at the same time 
I tend to get my stuff done during my first hour class because I have Study Hall that hour. Because of my classes I never get more than two assignments a day, but it’s still hard to get some assignments done on time.
Out team alway have a study hall time on weekday from after school (2:20pm or 1:45pm early bell) till 4:30 pm. I think that should help. You should know that FIRST would help you in life but would get you no where if you can’t get your grade up. Try your best everyone.
Balancing robotics and homework, that’s a tricky one. When you get home, don’t try to do every single part of every single homework assignment, instead do most of everything and none of nothing. Teachers realize that effort is what counts. My teachers just like to see that you’re trying to do everything that you can. It doesn’t help if you have all of your math homework done and none of your history. Speaking of math, I have an AP Calc midterm tomorrow, oh well. Time to study some more of AP Chem as well. I love the fact that I only have two midterms per day.
Because I have calculus zero hour I get a free hour during the day to do all my homework. Having calculus at 7:00 is a terrible idea it is way to early to do anything productive. After school I go to work then it takes me about 45 minutes to drive to Robotics meetings. I get home about 10:30 and finish homework and surf chiefdelphi until midnight then repeat.
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Do well first semester so that you won’t have to study much for the finals.
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You have an A at the beginning of second semester. Work on time-management and try your best to keep up(probably best to give up a lot of other time-consuming activities). If you fail, you have the rest of the semester to catch up and hopefully win back the A.
That is how I see it and I had to do a different version of it even before I joined robotics because I was in field show & marching band. It works, just don’t kill yourself over having few Bs on your third quarter grade and all shall be fine~
-Nita
i do my homework at robotics
As a Rookie Team, we decided that it would be best to hold work/build sessions everyday except Friday from 4-7. From the time school ends until 4pm, the Tech Ed. room is used a study hall for completing homework. We have found that this has been extremely useful and beneficial to the team members.
Scott
Dulaney 1727
By Being on the chief Delphi team 47for 3 years My grades dont really drop,its just that I always turn in my work at the last minute. I do most work during the class duration to and dont just sit there and fall a sleep. It is really hard trying to control schooling, robotics, varsity volleyball, and getting sleep trust me i feel how you feel. But help from people in the subjects that you dont understands helps too. My mentors help out a lot specially when they are the teachers and have already had that class or teacher. But staying after school everyday even on sundays hurts my sleeping hours alot. :o 
I graduated high school and college during the late Pleistocene, so I haven’t had to worry about homework for a while.
When I was a senior, though, I was on the Chess Team, the Speech Team, and worked on three plays (acted in two, stage manager in the third). I spent one night a week at the computer lab at Ford Aerospace playing “Star Trek” and learning how computers worked using a Teletype as a terminal. I spent at least one weekend a month out in the desert riding dirt bikes. I also had a steady girlfriend (who I married five years later and is the mother of two members of Team 1294).
My senior GPA was 3.9 and as I remember it, I solved the homework problem by not sleeping. Hope this helps. I had a great time that year. Too bad FIRST didn’t exist yet.
Do any of the teams have minimum academic standards for participation? Most sports teams do, why not “sports for the mind” teams?
Our school district has a 2.0 gpa standard for sports; the team standard is stricter - you must get at least 2.0 in each class. Any fails or D’s, and you are suspended until the grades improve.
We travelled to Atlanta with only 11 team members last year, because several were suspended for grades. That includes the guy who was our lead programmer and chief driver, and another who was our HP. So yes it hurt, but we kept to our standards. Grades are important. Getting below a 2.0 in HS is mostly because you are not doing the work, period. If you can’t handle it, you drop the extra-curricular stuff, including robotics, no matter how valuable it may be to you in later life. You could say the same thing about being on the football team, that it’s preparing you, but you need to get the grades.
The real value is in those who commented to the effect that you do just what you have to do to get through. That is a valuable life lesson - prioritize, do the important stuff best, but don’t skimp on anything.
OK, down off my soapbox now.
I just take it to school. Our team is at school from 5:30-8:30 (working on the robot.)We have time after school ,but if we don’t get it done or need help most just take it in and have someone on the team help them get it done.
School here isn’t really hard we kind of get special treatment by our teachers they let us leave class early for this and turn it in when you are finished. most of our teachers are cool with letting us do that. we well i really don’t ever get homework because we don’t slack off in class because if we do we will here it so we just try to get school work out of the way. They always preach to us about our grades and to strive for perfection. every body says that we are the brightest in the school and that we are overrated but that is the privlege of being on chief delphi so it is pretty easy to handle.
DITTO!