Just wondering how many hours your teams are REALLY working on designing, protoyping, documenting, building, testing etc.
Let’s say total hours per week averaged for your top 10 student team members.
Build On!
Being part of that group… we work ‘officially’ together as a team for approx. 3 hours a day; 8 hours on Saturday. However, people like me go home and do research, design, think, and work sometimes with other team members to just try to get ahead as much as possible. It ends up being around 5-6 hours a day… school is totally pointless.
About 32hours counting today.
the average of our top 10 students?..i would say…1 hour
^^ I’m not sure whether that’s said in a joking manner… otherwise, how far along are you guys and do you think you’ll get done at that rate?
With only 5 people on 330’s team we are mentoring, ALL the poor people on 1197 have to put in at least 25 hours/week. They announced last week that they discovered “FIRST really takes over your life, doesn’t it?”
Unfortunately, our problem is NOT student enthusiasm. Our limiting factor is the number of hours the students are ALLOWED to work.
Because we’re building offsite from the school, due to insurance rules, a teacher MUST be present for the students to work. So, we’re really limited by whatever hours we can find a TEACHER to be there. That’s proved more difficult than we first thought. Most teachers are seriously overworked now, so not many are hot on the idea of going across town after a long day (plus papers to grade, etc.) to attend a build at an offsite location for long hours. Therefore, we have “teacher signup shifts”. Different teachers are there for different days, and we have “holes” on occasion.
Whenever there’s no teacher students can meet, program, carry materials around, sort, document, etc. but may not operate any power tools. Even “allen wrench work” is considered taboo. A “designated adult” becomes their “hands” to assemble something a STUDENT needs assembled. (A very weird situation…)
Needless to say this is a real pain to get much done whenever a teacher isn’t there. We’re trying to work out this insurance snafu now, but as we’re already into Week Four of the build, we’re not sure it’ll make much difference at this point.
We KNEW this limit would factor into our robot’s complexity. No “twenty seven motor 3D vectoring hovercraft drives with fifteen DOF arms” that takes 5000 machinist hours to make, etc… But, this just serves to make you think HARD about what you want to do, keep the KISS principle FIRMLY in mind, and be EFFECTIVE with your work hours.
We also had the foresight to chose our build technology VERY wisely (structural extrusion, modular assembly, etc.). This has allowed INCREDIBLY FAST progress whenever we CAN work, so we’re still MUCH further ahead this year than my last team was last year.
We don’t expect completion to be a problem. In fact, I think everyone should like what you see when it does arrive. 'Tis gonna be a VERY COOL robot… 
Bottom line: Students may work a maximum of roughly 20 hours a week AT the site, but they come in PRIMED to work. Many however think about it a lot outside the build area, and come in with drawings, ideas, etc., so it is EXTREMELY hard to determine exactly how many hours any one student REALLY works on it.
Like any “passion”, you virtually LIVE it while it is happening. How CAN you honestly count “the hours invested” in it???
- Keith
We also run into problems with when we can do it. We normally do it in the evenings from 6-9 but that’s not very much time. Some people (adults) have other things they need to attend to. We used to work Fridays during the day but we can’t any more. We 8a-5p on Saturdays…and thats the day we get most things done. Our team has a split attendance rate. There are either people who show up at everything for as long as possible or people that barely show their face. Actual work on the other hand…not a whole lot of that gets done. We’re weeks into the build season and we’re still designing. We don’t have a thing built. I think theres going to be a loooong week before shipping.
Lol, that sounds exactly like our team… saturdays from 10-5 and weekdays from 6-9 on m,w,f and 2:45-5:30 on t,t… however, some of us do so much stuff at home and plan ahead that we actually are very very productive.
We went from our usual schedule of Mon & Wed 6-9 and Fri & Sat 9-5 from previous years… to the new schedule of Mon-Thur 6-9 & Sat 9-5… we have two less working hours a week this year… and I think we are farther behind than ever… possibility of looooonnngg weekend becoming looonnng weekendS.
My team meets each night from 7-10 and on weekends from 10-4.
My schedule is slightly more hectic. I’m doing something involving FIRST each day from about 11 am until 10 pm.
Our team meets every day but sunday
mon.-thur. 4:30 - 8:00 or so
longer on fridays
and sat 10-8 (roughly)
if anyone person was there all that time they’ed be there 28 hours.
Mon-Fri 5:30-10
Sat(in January)10-10
Sat(in Febuary)9-11(sometime into the next morning)
Sun 12-10
We’re meeting MWF 3p-8p, Sat Sun 8a-8p, Holiday weekday and non-student day 8a-8p.
Nelson and Miller family’s generally there all the time.
Other kids come and go.
Nelson and Miller adults doing robotic stuff during weekdays when kids are in school.
Ready for a vacation!
we’re Wed and Thu 5-8 and Sat 9-4. WE get to sleep.
Our core team members work from the end of school (2:15) till 6~9, which puts a real strain on our schoolwork, and we spend from 9~6 on weekends. This may explain why one of our senior members failed a french class that is one level below what I am studying, and I’m a Sophomore…
And yet we haven’t gotten out of the design phase…are we screwed or what?:]
*Originally posted by Jeremy L *
**we’re Wed and Thu 5-8 and Sat 9-4. WE get to sleep. **
A mentor of ours says I need to teach the kids sleep hygiene, especially for during the regionals.
It’s summer vacations in Brazil ( unfair advantage? remember Dean’s words: it’s never a fair thing - though summer does bring its own difficulties ).
Our top5 students are in @ 8 AM and go as late as someone will leave the lab open ( usually last mentor/teacher will close it up around 8-9 PM ). With lunchtime breaks, etc, it ends up between 8-10hrs/day for 40++/wk, not counting weekends ( I haven’t been there on a saturday yet ).
The mentors rotate shifts, I go mon/wed/fri, another goes tue/thu/fri, a third college student will do mostly everyday after his classes, and we have the full-time physics and robotics teacher during the typical working day hours.
But no matter the number of hours - we do get behind schedule. There are things hundreds of lab hours can’t do ( external jobs, waiting for parts, ad infinitum… )
We work 6 days a week, some people do 7.
Sunday- 1pm to 5pm (sometimes 6pm)
Monday thru Thursday- 2:25pm to 6:30(or 7:30)pm
Friday- Off…except for a few people, or a group here and there.
Saturday- 9am-whenever (around 5-6pm)
Well, team 1077 meets on Sundays, Mondays and Wednesdays, 6 hours a day. In total its 18 or so hours a week… Yet, I know in the final 2 weeks we are going to be meeting 7 days a week trying to get the bot done. We always wait for the last minute.