Last year we took only the girls portion of the team to the San Diego Regional and we learned a lot from the experience! We are doing three regionals again this year so we decided to take the girls on another excursion as an all girl team of a coed team. This year we are taking the girls to the LA regional. The picture shows how the girls knocked out the guys and loaded up in the vans and headed for LA. There was quite a bit of discussion generated by this act of ours last year on CD. Search for We Left The Boys At Home for the posting last year. We will post anything new that we learned this year.
PS We are also going to Atlanta so we really have four tournaments.
This is one of the interesting ideas I ever heard of in the FIRST world and I am proud at what your team is doing. Hopefully this experience will be better than it was last year and your team will even more from this event.
I cannot help but comment because this still confuses me, but to each his own i suppose… or her own, whatever :rolleyes: I guess i just don’t get taking only the girls… do you ever take only the guys? What makes it fair to take the girls only but not the guys only. How come you can take all of the girls and everyone applauds you, yet if i suggest taking only the guys i’m a sexist pig? 
I believe that the premise is to make sure that the girls get a “chance” to participate fully in the competition. I know that there are a lot of teams that have girls that are assertive and are fully active members of the team (building, driving, pit, etc). But many girls on teams are unsure of their abilities and therefore not willing to step forward and assert themselves to try the jobs that they may want to attempt. The sad reality (as I see it) is that girls are often relegated to other duties by the boys to do things that “only girls” can do. They are asked to hand out buttons, cheer for the team, scout (in the stands and pit), and other duties. Without the boys, the girls are given the chance to see what it is like to take on a typically male role.
This clears up a little why i am confused, I just can’t relate to this team because the females on our team are assertive and take leadership positions. Mechanical, electrical, PR, all headed up by girls. So if what you are saying is true then all i have to say to girls that feel this way is: there’s no reason to feel inferior. It’s as simple as that, guys may be more aggressive and such, but most guys also don’t think with their brains 80% of the time. Go out there and show people that you are just as good at stereotypically “guy” jobs as guys are.
I’d also like to point out that female engineers are more attractive than all of the football cheerleaders combined (nothing against you cheerleaders out there, just my girlfriend is going into engineering 
)
Before anybody sends this thread spinning out of control, be sure to take a look at last year’s thread first to get a better feel for what 842 is trying to accomplish:
I wish we had enough girls on the team and the funding to do something like this.
FIRST is about inspiration. We inspire those who did not know they needed to be inspired. I didn’t join FIRST because I wanted to be inspired, I joined because it looked cool. We were a rookie team last year and I was a freshman on a dedicated team of 5 so I kind of had to step up and not be shy. FIRST made me more outgoing and willing to try new things, whether I thought I needed it or wanted it (and I am glad).
Until you go to a competition and do a task (that is stressful like driving, pit crew, programming, etc not say, watching matches or just hanging out with your own friends in the stands or in your pits) you will not, in my opinion, fully experience FIRST.
I can see how this may seem sexist to guys who have very outgoing girls on their teams that fully participate but when they are less outgoing (or all of the high stress tasks are taken up already) they will not be as inspired unless you give them a chance. I mean REALLY, REALLY give them a chance.
-Vivek
I do not mean to offend in anyway, I am just stating my opinion.
I think people should receive positions based solely on merit.
I have noticed that girls seem to have a predisposition to public relations because it’s English related and avoid other areas, but that’s because they choose to. It’s not like the guys that join the team join knowing how to use every tool and how to create an awesome robot while the girls come in clueless. Everyone starts from the same position and they develop in the fields they choose.
If you’re not aggressive enough to get the started role in my mind that isn’t a good reason. If a guy had the ambition to stick his nose in and learn more/faster/better then a girl he should have the starting position, and vice versa.
Where is Jacob (the Dragons - 1991) anyway? He was all over the original thread.
I’m interested in testing a “Leave the girls at home” proposal at the next team meeting…if you guys don’t hear from me in a while, this is my farewell. 
In the hospital again, same thing as last time.
Great job, girls (women) of 842! here’s a short video…you were having fun…we could tell
out of curiosity, because you take “just the girls”, do you make sure that ALL the girls who go are able to 1)answer all of the judge’s questions, 2)fix the robot if it breaks, and 3)have an extensive knowledge of each subsystem on the robot? also, do you mix up who you have in the stands and who you have in the pits?
I definitely noticed this team at the regional. I come from a permanently all girls team myself and I was excited when I heard it announced that there was another all girls team present. I think it is cool that some of the girls got to step up and take charge on your team but I also think that maybe teaching the girls AND guys to take equal leadership and responsibility for the robot would have been just as good. 
The girls did all the roles. The ideas is to give the the chance without any subliminal effect from male peers. The mere presence of guys would affect the “experiment”. So to answer you question, they talk to the judges and fix the robot but they don’t necessairliy have an extensive knowledge of each subsystem, but they learn it on the fly, in the heat of battle. The team still has the saem mentors. The female mentors have the dominant role here with the male mentors in an assistance or supportive role. They learn a tremendous amount very quickly. On a side note the girls got selected for a finals alliance and made it to the semifinals! They also won the Kliener Perkins… award!
You also have to take into account that ours school is 93 percent hispanic. In the hispanic culture women have a much harder time being assertive in male dominated roles. This is an added obstacle for our girls. It is easy to say they should just be assertive and another to do it in our cultural environment.
Thanks for the video! It was great to see it!! You guys are the best!! Hope to see you again soon. Don’t forget to sign up for NURC!!!
Hey 842!
Looking forward to hearing about the experience and what you’ve learned this year!
Jane
Glad you liked the movie, I though you would!
Also on the ride home today Steven and Gary and I figured out some neat ideas for the NURC, and we also talked about two of us going up to Vegas this Saturday to see the regional. We’ll see if mom will let us go
If you go, we will share the hotel room with you! Save some bucks, The rooms are already paid for!
If you go, we will share the hotel room with you! Save some bucks, The rooms are already paid for!
We are still debriefing…
Overall, it had some similarities, and some differences. It was again a great experiences for the girls and the guys were even more eager for the girls to have this opportunity. They made it to the semifinals! They improved the bot as well. More later…