I suppose what I wanted to say can be directed more towards the students on teams than mentors, but I’m sure for many it can be applied to both.
As build season starts in the morning with Kickoff, I wanted to add a little piece of advice to students on every team. Student leaders such as captains and subteam captains hold a lot of heavy responsibilities during the build season. Some of these responsibilities can be coped with easily and handled by the students, but sometimes burdens can to greater than your captains and even adult mentors can handle. I just like to remind students who aren’t part of team leadership, that no matter what the outcome of your build season, make sure you remember not to criticize the efforts of those around you too harshly (or in some cases, at all). It is always easier to point fingers during and after build season when you are not given great responsibilities yourself. So just know that sometimes, your fellow students, even though they may be captains, are still just students who are capable of making the same mistakes and lapses in design judgment as you are. Sometimes decisions made by students leaders cannot be criticized if the person pointing fingers never made an effort to make an impact of the decision in the first place. I’m sure I am not the only former student leader to have faced criticism during/after the season, so I wanted to put this out as a reminder to all students, that sometimes mistakes are made by student leaders, but you may not know all sides to a decision. So speak your mind before something happens! Don’t stand there! I hope what I’ve said here is at least a little coherent and expresses what I am trying to say. Sometimes being a real leader is harder than it looks from the outside.
Your student leaders are still just that in the end, students. Remember to think before you speak negatively about them or decisions being made by the TEAM. No single person is responsible for the outcome of a season on a TEAM.
Start off the season in the morning with open minds and vocalize your ideas and opinions. Don’t hold anything back, you will regret it in the end. (This does not mean shoot down ideas you don’t like right off the bat during brainstorming, it means express your opinion while major decisions are being made).
Best of luck to everyone for the season! I hope this didn’t sound preachy or whiney, just a little PSA. If you disagree WITH THIS POST feel free to say why!
This reminds me of the quote: “it won’t fail because of me.” From the book A Man On The Moon, The Voyages of the Apollo Astronauts by Andrew Chaikin.
A few weeks before his Apollo 17 launch Ken Mattingly went to the launch pad and gazed up at the towering Saturn V rocket that would take him and two other astronauts to the moon. He realized at that moment that he barely knew what he was looking at. Sure, he understood the basic design, and he knew the parts and pieces he had to know. But their were several million parts in the whole thing and each one had been designed, fabricated, tested and installed by someone. Standing there, he knew the scope of Apollo was beyond the grasp of any one mind. He then rode the elevator up to the place where the third stage met the spacecraft adapter section, and there, at the juncture, was an open hatchway. He climbed through until he was standing inside a great metallic ring lined with pipes and electrical lines and all kinds of components. The lone technician who was working in there was startled- “Who are you? Get out of here.” - but once he understood that he was talking to one of the men who would ride this rocket, he was just as gracious as could be. He said to Mattingly, “You know, I can’t imagine what it’s going to be like for you. But I can tell you this: It won’t fail because of what I do.” Mattingly realized that the reason Apollo worked at all was because thousands of people had said to themselves, “It won’t fail because of me.”
There is no “I” in team. Remember that: no one person wins the games, but every one is dependent on the man next to him. You have a responsibly and you better do that job to the fullest. It takes one man break a team, but it takes everyone to make a team.
I don’t mind people posting the “whys” here on CD, but tomorrow afternoon I’m going to try to abolish the “whys” as the team begins to toss out ideas about the strategies and possibilities for our game play and robot design this season. I will make it clear that we need the ideas FIRST and the “whys” can follow later if necessary. Maybe as early as Sunday, if I think we’ve run out of new ideas.
My reasoning behind banning the “Whys” is to forestall discussion/argument/enthusiasm/disdain/acceptance/rejection for any particular ideas before they have a chance to germinate. I may even involve the use of my loud referees whistle to signal rejection of “whys” and “Why-nots” statements. All ideas, whatever the source, MUST be listed among the season’s possibilities BEFORE we try to determine their value. My hope is that team members who might be intimidated by the prospect of saying something too “foolish” will get the idea that we want all the possibilities to be considered. I further hope that the concept of ownership of any particular idea will be concealed if not forgotten among the extensive list of options we tally after seeing what horrors the GDC has rained upon us.
I hope I remember to print this before leaving for the kickoff. :eek:
I like that logic but there comes a BIG problem with that when you do that before you decide on your game strategy. If loud-enough teammates like an idea enough, they’ll steer every other decision in favor of it, compromising your strategy. I’ve inadvertently done this myself before
I think “decide strategy, then free brainstorm (no striking down ideas)” is better, that way your strategy decision is unadulterated.
I meant if you disagree with this post, say why. Not if you disagree with a design idea. You understandably (I fixed it now) interpreted what I said the other way. I believe David understood what I was trying to convey though.
