There have been posts in CD usually during build about the lack of time, staying up all night, drinking energy drinks to aid in the crunch. When I read these posts, I often wonder about the students and mentors who aren’t posting who are managing their time, their grades, their commitments relatively well or at least trying. It is admirable.
Does anyone have any tips/suggestions on how you prioritize and manage your responsibilities in school and other commitments?
Jane
I think that for a lot of us, the realistic answer is “I don’t manage it. Everything on my schedule pretty much goes all to hell during build season. Which is why I am glad it is only six weeks long!” 
-dave
It is very difficult for the students. We (mentors) try and network students so they can work on assignments together, study for a test, or get tutoring while at robotics. As often as possible, we stress the importance of keeping up, and they do a great job for the most part.
Basically, it becomes, study when you can…sort of like studying or doing homework during the commercials while watching your favorite TV shows.
For us robotics doesnt start until five thirty. This gives time for engineers to arrive and for students to do their homework. We get done with school at 220 and have the rest of the time till 530 to do our homework.
Honestly, this is probably one of the things I look back at and go, I can’t believe I was able to do all of this.
I love being involved in school, so I am apart of many various clubs at school and am an active volunteer at local libraries. I am on the robotics board (our robotics gov.), game club, junior senator, prom committee, student council, and president of the school’s fashion club.
When it comes to managing grades and responsiblities, I prioritize everything to which is most important to me. For me it goes school, then robotics, then everything else.
When you’re in a year as important as your Junior year in highschool, where you have SATs and every grade counts 3x more than the rest, you have to realize that you MUST save time to do your work. (Then again, no matter what grade you’re in, you still have to save some hw time.)
On our team, a message that we try to put across is that you should serve as role models in our school. We do everything as a team to make sure that everyone still keeps their grades up. We give tutoring sessions to our members when needed.
A lot of it has depended on my involvement in the team. During my first year on a team (as a HS Junior on 971) I was learning how the team worked, and my main task was CAD design. Since I had the software, I did what I could during the time at school, and then finished my work at home after my schoolwork was done.
During my Senior year I was Team President, so much more of my time was devoted to the team. During build season, this resulted in a number of late nights finishing homework. Fortunately, my high school’s February break always falls on the week of ship, so we have plenty of time to pull all nighters during the last 5 days if necessary.
This past year, I again took a lesser role, this time on team 190 as a college freshman. I planned my schedule such that the easiest classes were during build season, and made sure to pass off my duties to other team members during the weeks that I had tests.
I have never been one to overload myself with the hardest AP courses offered, and instead balanced my schooling with other activities, such as robotics. There has always been enough time for me to do everything, as long as I manage that time well.
You probably won’t like the answer, but this is my normal routine.
Luckily in college most of my engineering courses (besides labs) do not collect homework regularly. They assign it and if you do it or not, it will show on the test. Normally the first test in most of my courses is around the 5th week in build season. I normally am able to keep my schedule in tact week 1 and 2. Week 3 I normally start to feel the pinch…by the weekend of week 4 if all is going well it is time for me to handover work to software/drivers. I still am involved, but for much less time a week. I normally then study very intensely up until the tests and catch up on all my work.
Sometimes things come up that I can’t avoid, but mostly during the days (when the high school is having classes) I try to stay ahead of the curve in the beginning (reading ahead, doing homework well before it is due) because I know I am going to fall behind at some point. Minimizing that catch up work is my focus. I try to work more in fall and save up money so I can take some time off (as little as possible), but it always seems to work out.
If I were to give advice is…understand and be prepared (mentally/physically) for what kind of stress you are going to put yourself through. Try to stay ahead with work/school whenever possible. If I were to really give advice to someone that wants to help in college is, join an existing team, there is a support structure there to help when you feel pressure. I started one and it is no walk in the park.
It is possible, but before I had college figured out (to a degree) it was no fun when I received grades. After this past year where I helped collaborate with 1902, went to four different events, I only got a C in a lab (1/14 credits) and finished with a 3.67 GPA that semester. It is tough, but my mom tells me what doesn’t kill me makes me stronger. 
Good luck out there!!
it is very simple -
I require very little sleep.
And I love coffee and Red Bull.
Chris and I were cut from the same stock apparently. Between 2 jobs, school, and FIRST, I sleep about 4 hours a night max during the build season.
Mt. Dew and Full Throttles are pretty much hooked up to an IV in my arm.
During the build season, I stop watching tv, cut down on the time I spend on the internet and make it clear to my family that they will start seeing me again as soon as the robot is in the crate. This leaves me with almost enough time to get my homework done at home. What remains becomes a way to fill all that downtime I have during the school day.
This is not a good example for a mentor for be setting for young FIRSTers with developing brains.
It came to my attention today that I somehow made the Dean’s List during robotics season. How?
1) Ease back on the coursework. According to the University of South Carolina, I took fifteen credit-hours this semester–par for the course. However, look a little closer and you find that MART 210 (Digital Media Arts Fundamentals) is just a wee bit easier than, say, FINA 363 (Principles of Finance) or MGMT 371 (Operations Management). Saving a relatively easy course for the spring makes things a lot easier.
2) Know what counts, and what “counts”. There are things that have a significant impact on your grade, and there are things that have no impact on your grade. Being able to successfully discern the difference is a huge boost.
3) Don’t be afraid to play the robot card. I had a professor this semester with a simple attendance policy: miss more than three classes, get an F. Well, I thought I had it figured out–Florida was spring break, miss for Palmetto, Championship, Discovery Day, and just don’t get sick. Well, I somehow didn’t realize that Florida was not spring break–it was the week before. I mentioned as such to my professor, and it turns out he’s a fan of robots. Not only did the Friday before spring break turn into an optional day, the lab assignment for the week of Palmetto was to go see a robot and make a note of how it functioned. (Who’da thunk?)
4) When the chips are down, your back-burnering of any assignment for robotics came at the cost of your right to whine. Sometimes, you’ve just gotta grind until the job is done. It’s not fun, it’s not glamorous, it’s nowhere near as fun as going to the Championship–but it’s just gotta get done.
I forgot to mention this. Some of my teachers were pretty lenient, especially this year, when it came to making up robotics related work. It’s clear to them that I work really hard during the build season and that robotics is important enough to allow them to forgive a couple worksheets that show up a day late and covered in grease.
Darnit Dave, you took the words right out of my mouth!
But on a serious note, I usually try to do all of my work in school. When I have something to take home, I will skip TechnoKats for the night. You just have to remember that you don’t have to be there every night.
I put robotics over all else my junior and senior years. I got by in my classes by doing homework and sleeping in the non-important ones, and doing the rest of my homework in the more important ones. It all worked out and I got pretty good grades. My reasoning was that I was getting more out of robotics then my classes, so this is why. As a mentor this year, I basicaly did nothing on weekends except robotics. And I wasted a lot of free time playing arround with CAD and such.
Yeah what Dave said =). There really is no right way to manage time while on a Robotics Team especially during build season where you are more pre-occupied getting the robot done so that the drive teams have as much time with it as possible. I usually let my H.W. & Projects get done at the end of the day if there is still enough energy to do them otherwise it just waits till lunch time the following day. Thankfully enough my teachers were understanding enough to accept the material late as opposed to failing me for not “attempting” to do it in the first place. It’s hard to keep to a schedule when building a robot takes most of the time in the first 2 months of the year & anything that gets accomplished after the robot is extra credit =).
Like Billfred, I also made Deans List this semester.
At Michigan State, the professors unfortunately do not allow you to play the robotics card, they pretty much say, if no one died or came close to it, you had better be in class.
So basically, I did the same thing that I’ve done for the last 3 years. Realize that school has to come first and organize my time accordingly. You’ve gotta look at your schedule and make a list of the "have to do"s, "would like to do"s and the "probably don’t hafta"s. Find a way to do the "have to"s. These include school and doing well in it. And by well I mean, there had better be at least a 3.0 at the semester end. I would put attending at least 75% of robotics meetings on that list. On the "would like"s, I would place the other 25%, as well as traveling. I know, traveling is the best part of robotics, but sometimes it’s just not possible.
You have to know your limits and you have to recognize them. I am the queen of believing that I can do anything including starting a FIRST team my freshman year of college. But if things start to get out of control, you have to remember to go back and make sure you remember what’s going to get you a job, and that’s school not FIRST.
Long story short for those who don’t want to read this whole post. As long as you can balance, go for it, but for those who can’t, assess and allot proper time to proper activities.
it is very simple -
I require very little sleep.
And I love coffee and Red Bull
Just trying to prepare them for college… 
In all honesty, I had to really consider how I did manage to pull through the build season, maintaining a satisfying GPA.
Unlike some of the members of our team, I am unable to complete my homework between 2:20 and 5:30, for the most part. Many of those days, I had winter guard practice. It was bad enough that I missed every Monday night practice for guard, but really it was about prioritizing. In my mind, school and robotics were far more important than winter guard, to many of those members’ dismay. (We won’t go there, though.
)
In addition to guard, I would have dance twice a week, unless I was doing something that required my full attention for robotics, in which case I would call my dance instructor and she would understand why I wouldn’t be there. (Her husband is in biomedical engineering, so I think she sees some of the importance, lucky for me. )
I think that above all, it is simply an opportunity to work on time management. Most days during the build season I would be at school from 7:00 in the morning to 8:30 or 9:00, or even 10:00, and once 11:00ish at night. On occasion, something would be canceled or I would have maybe a half hour or so between activities. I spent this time to work on homework. I also used all the time in my classes, working on assignments until the bell rang. I would sometimes sit in the guard room and work on it, or in the robotics lab.
Let’s just say the janitors got to know me very well. I even went to the extent of stashing a jar of peanut butter in my guard locker (sealed well, of course) for the random nights I wouldn’t make it home to eat dinner. I never failed to complete an assignment, although I will admit that the quality of my work dropped. I also utilized my study halls to work on some projects for my IED (intro to engineering design) class, which kept me ahead or at least up to speed in that class, which was one of my most important classes to me anyway.
I think that what helped me most, was understanding that school and robotics go hand in hand. If you really want to be an engineer or any other science/math related field, then you have to work hard at both. Your school work ethic will translate to the jobs you take care of for your team. You simply have to find an effective way to maintain your school work ethic, while devoting most of your other waking hours to another very beneficial portion of your life and studies, robotics.
The last thing that I think really helped me to succeed, both academically, and in robotics, was the fact that I more or less eliminated commodities such as, television, movies, internet usage not related to robotics, and quite a bit of sleep. I know sleep is important, but sometimes you have to sacrifice some of it to accomplish whatever might need done for your academic classes. I know that if it hadn’t been for a couple of sleepless nights, I would not have turned in quite a number of projects on time, and my grades would be drastically different right now. I think that the build season is just an example of what many of us pursuing careers in these fields will experience through college, and even into our jobs. When there is a deadline, you have to meet it. Nobody is going to change it because you have other responsibilities. Juggling all of these things is one of those skills that FIRST helps to develop. The bottom line is that school will help you get almost anywhere, if you work your hardest while you’re there.
I also know that having to maintain certain grades in all of our classes for travel with the team, is incentive enough to excel in our academic courses.
On the other hand, when something doesn’t turn out as planned, don’t take defeat; use it as positive energy to correct the problem and reorganize your priorities.
I would just like to add a comment here.
I have been PM’d by a couple of students who have been looking forward to and appreciate the tips and suggestions that have been given in this thread…so thank you everyone.
Jane
You’ve just got to buckle down and do the work. It may not be fun, but it’s got to happen, whether it be robotics or school related. Nights get a little later, mornings get a little tougher, but in the end it’s worth it.
I found that doing homework not after 10:00 PM is a good idea. If you want to find the time to do it, you can.
For some kids on my team last year grades got better during the build season. I think this was due to a positive outlook on things caused by the build season. There’s something about building a robot that just makes people enthusiastic about life.