Do you prefer competitions/events scheduled Friday-Sunday or Thursday-Saturday?
The reason I ask, and that I personally voted Friday-Sunday, for the record, is because as a college student who mentors and volunteers a lot, it is difficult for me to miss that extra day of classes on Thursday, and I’m afraid I won’t be able to make it to day 1 of Thursday-Saturday competitions in the future. Certainly if I’d be missing the same classes 3+ times for 3+ competitions, which is almost guaranteed with the district model. I’d like to hear both sides’ opinions, so please comment your thoughts!
Don’t forget that missing church on Sunday is a concern for many. Also, I prefer Thursday-Saturday competitions because I invariably have a conflict on the weekend of my Regional, so it helps to not have the entire weekend blocked out by a competition.
For me, having a day before the work week to recover and rest is far better for my health and productivity than the negative impact of missing another day of work.
Honestly, Thursday-Saturday events are horrible, especially given the part of the year they are in. My AP United States History teacher gave me the dirtiest look when I told him I would be missing those two days. Apparently they were the days we were going to be learning how to do a DBQ. I made up the work, but it’s such a shame to be missing two whole days of school during crunch time.
On the flip side, Friday-Sunday events leave me no time to do my weekend homework. Thankfully, my teachers have been willing to give me extensions on this work, but I’m sure other students are less fortunate than me in that regard.
Overall, I’ve had a better experience on Friday-Sunday events. I thought they were the norm when we were just doing the NYC regional. I was shocked to find out that the opposite was true.
My AP Lang teacher when I was a junior always scowled at me when I would miss days for regional’s and champs, thankfully she gave me extensions for all the work and essays, but I feel you here. :yikes:
I don’t know which is worse for me, but I’d probably take Friday-Sunday events cause I’m planning to volunteer at regional’s next year from college and rather not have to deal with missing lectures.
Being that we are going into our fourth year in districts after two years in a regional system I can say as a lead mentor the Friday-Sunday works way better for us. With Friday to Sunday we miss no school for the district events, 2 days for district championship and 4 days for Worlds for a total of 6 days of missed school and work as well as 5 half days of work for mentors. With the Thursday to Saturday events the count now goes up to 9 days of missed school and work plus the 5 half days. Most working people get 2 weeks(10 days) of vacation so the second option literally uses all the available vacation days. The only exception is if the traveling mentors are all school teachers or sponsor employees that get paid time off for the events. Our team has no mentors that can get these additional days off from work with pay.
If Sunday events became typical, I would immediately stop doing FRC as a coach/mentor and go to church with my family like I go every week as an example that this is my priority over FRC.
I only missed one Friday because of an event (coupled with an ISEF affiliated science competition the day before) and one of my teachers freaked out that I was absent for so long. It was emotionally draining and caused so much tension between said teacher and I that we had to take it to the principal to sort out.
She refused to give me extensions while I was unable to do any work for her class. My grades weren’t as high the ensuing two weeks.
Given all of this I would prefer to have Friday-Sunday competitions. I miss way too much school in the Thursday-Saturday model, and think I’d be too tired Sunday to do any work anyways. I tried to do most of my hw after we were eliminated on Sunday which worked (except for said teacher’s class of course).
(s/o to those kids that helped me with my AP Bio homework ).
I could go either way. Having to take one less day off work per event would be nice. But on the other hand, some of those events leave me so exhausted that I need Sunday just to recover.
Cool. I don’t think you should need to demonstrate your priorities to anyone other than yourself, you don’t need to impress anyone. Do what makes you happy. I happen to disagree with your decision, but that’s what makes me happy.
For me, personally, Friday-Sunday events are a dream. I’m a young, non-religious mentor/volunteer who currently has few obligations outside of work and robotics. It would be nice to have a day between robots and work on Monday, but I’d rather be at a full event and just need a lot of caffiene to get though work on Monday, than only being able to attend one day of all of our events and being well-rested on Mondays. That extra day of rest would be nice if I had the vacation time to spare, but I don’t.
I know many others who need that recovery day to spend time with family/spouses, go to church, and/or study, and I can imagine Friday-Sunday events are not as good for them.
I think I have to vouch for the Thursdays-Saturday competitions. Whether you’re part of a team or a volunteer, you NEED a “gap day” before heading back to school or work! These competitions are exhausting (especially if you have to travel)!
For people who hate missing school, I totally feel you. But, after surviving my senior year, I learned that you shouldn’t underestimate the value of a day of rest. Just be honest and open with your teachers about how much time you’re having to put towards robotics. Then, hopefully, they’ll be more understanding if you have to miss days or if you need to extra time for assignments.
I’m very happy that FiM uses the Thursday-Saturday layout, or else I would have never been able to join robotics. Missing one day of school every other week wasn’t really ever a problem at my school. If FiM had competitions on sundays, my parents wouldn’t have been ok with me joining, and I would have missed out on all the awesome experiences I have had in FRC. I definitely understand that competing on sundays would make life easier for many people, but I am very thankful that FiM doesn’t use the Friday-Sunday layout
I’m split on this one, and due to this I’m glad Indiana does both.
One one hand the F-Su layout is better in terms of how many vacation days I destroy per event. However, that also means I miss a week of Church, which isn’t a major issue since it’s usually no more than two weeks lost (and I have a backup for my church role as AV operator). Pro’s and con’s both ways.
I’m happy that we had a 1/2 and 1/2 mix of events in NE this year. Several teams, notably 1519 for NE, do not compete on Sundays do to their religious background. However, many other teams prefer Friday-Sunday District Events so that they don’t miss as much school. I personally don’t mind either, and I think that the decision comes down to the priorities of the team members, and having the choice is best.
I voted Friday-Sunday before realizing that it was ok for me to miss school for events, and I can’t retract my vote.
After considering that I would rather have the Sunday off. That also lets traveling teams have a bit of wiggle room.
At least you HAVE a backup! Count your blessings. (I technically have a backup on lighting, but that means I’m pulling from the streaming, sound, or multimedia crew, so somebody else has to be filled in for.)
If I have a robotics event on Sunday, I take Monday off of work. I need that gap day to recover, refocus, and take care of stuff I normally take care of on weekends. I’ve noticed when I don’t have that… So I prefer Thurs-Sat events. Vacation time, neutral; dealing with other “stuff”, it just works better that way.
).