Basically, I’m going to be moving from Southern California to Washington DC soon, probably around January. I’m the business manager for my team and all my closest friends are on the team. I’m probably moving in the first half of the season and starting at a new school in the middle of the year. I really don’t know what I’m going to do. Any help or advice y’all have would be greatly appreciate it.
Note: I know I already posed this in chit-chat accidentally and I can’t figure out how to move it. Sorry!!!
My advice would be to start planning now on your current team for your transition, finding new students who can learn from you and take over what you do. Additionally, once you know which school district you’ll be moving to, reach out to the new team and see if you’ll be able to join them mid-season in some capacity.
There are tons of teams in the DC metro area in the Chesapeake District. Just go to the FIRST website and search for teams in the zip code you are moving to. Bet you will find a team within 20 minutes of you.
Welcome to the right coast! I also moved between two FRC teams in HS, although it wasn’t during the season. I learned from that experience that it wasn’t super useful to couch all of my new experiences in terms of what my old team did… it was better to keep an open mind and give myself the time to learn the culture of the new team. It’s your 2nd ANYTHING (programming language, CAD platform, robot control system, FRC team, relationship) that lets you distinguish between the weird little intricacies of a thing, and the underlying fundamentals of the whole class of things. Although really challenging, this will be an opportunity to gain a lot of cool insight that’s not accessible to most FRC students.
Thank you so much!! The problem is I’m currently the only person that can do this, ( I mean if they pick me, a newbie in her first year on the team that has to show something) and moreover I have no idea where or when I’m actually moving. All I have is January ish and DC.
I’d definitely begin preparing for when you leave. I know that we’ve had challenges on our team with retaining knowledge and expertise when others leave, and we try to make sure all people graduating or moving train some new members what they know so that the team can keep growing and competing to our fullest capacity.
I’d also say you should check out if your new location in DC has a FIRST team. Always a good idea to stay involved in whatever capacity you can.
