And I was able to complete my submission, at 8:36 AM EST.
Submitted this morning. Looks like it’s working again.
TIMS up!
Submitted our nomination at 6:40 AM PST today.
Thanks for getting this back up FIRST!
The instructions on the Dean’s List page read, across, the top, “Once your submission is complete, click the Submission Complete button below. If you discover an error in your submission, you can still make changes up until the deadline.”
I don’t see a button labeled as ‘Submission Complete,’ but I have checks for all of the fields below. What am I missing?
-Madison
Hi Madison,
I think the “submission complete” button only appeared once. Once you’ve clicked it for the first time, you just have the “edit details” and “back to team summary” buttons. I take it that the submission is always considered “complete” after that initial submission, regardless of your changes.
If you go back to your team summary, it should show “Last submitted by …” and a check mark next to Dean’s List.
Ah – thanks. I thought that might be the case, but it wasn’t clear.
I’m glad to see that someone got there before I did. Relying on me to beat deadlines before 10am is never a good idea. 
It’s good you got it in when you did Madison… it was a 9:00 am deadline.
(for us west coast types at least)
I did write to FIRST and ask them to consider an extension for teams on the west coast that tried for a long time last night to get in and could not…
I had already gotten ours in this morning…so this was not for our team…
Here was the response from them:
We understand that last night’s technical issue negatively impacted teams, and we are very sorry for the inconvenience. We thank you for sharing your feedback about this, but we will not be considering a deadline extension as the Dean’s List Award was open for submissions from November 14th-February 20th.
interesting and not what I expected… but I understand their point…
If I did not extend a deadline in my classroom after I was the one that had problems accepting an assignment on the last day that the assignment was due… I would have major problems…
I am a little disappointed with this response from FIRST.
While our team submitted a week ago and recently had added/revised a few parts with success, I hope others didnt miss the deadline due to this.
The build season is a big factor when considering students. I fail to see how any good writeup, especially for a 1st year student can be done during the November 14th opening when school isnt even 1/2 way through yet nor was the experience of the student in an FRC program at its peak during build season.
Some of the posters here are also mentors who help build robots. Its not like they are procrastinating with so much free time to spare.
My only suggestion would be to extend it the same amount of time that it was unavailable for teams to submit.
I don’t think it’s an unreasonable expectation that FIRST’s systems would function as intended – particularly near the deadline. It’s a little silly for them to pass the blame onto others (You could’ve done this when it wasn’t broken!) rather than admit culpability and atone for it.
I knew it was a 9AM deadline; I usually don’t get up until after 9 because I’m both lazy and lucky that my employer is awesome. Expecting me to function before 10 is a bad idea. I happened to wake up earlier today because build season wiped me out and I fell asleep at 7 last night.
I guess waiting to get feedback from mentors busy building and programming the robot until after the robot was bagged turned out not to be a good thing. They could have just shut it down on Kickoff Day and said “you had since November.”
Sad. Very sad.
Sorry, but this is totally unacceptable and completely unprofessional. This sort of response makes the organization look like it is being run by a bunch of clowns. I am extremely angry about how FIRST handled this situation. Imagine if they told teams “Sorry, but only robots bagged before week six may compete, you had from the beginning of build to make robots, and those who did not submit early can’t submit at all.” It would not work out.
FIRST was unable to run their website, which can be an understandable problem, but was just too darn lazy to address the problem.
As a west-coast team, I know that our team missed the deadline because of the networking issues and TIMS. It made a lot of people very upset (myself being one of them). I do hope they reverse the decision on not having an extension.
This is not the first time that servers have crashed around Awards time. FIRST has sent out multiple reminders about when Dean’s List projects are due. In college, most of us are taught that deadlines mean hard deadlines. It’s real life. There was plenty of time to submit early. I expect my students to submit essays before the deadline (goal is a week before, though this year one team did them the day before and another team did them 12 hours before).
If I had not gotten my Dean’s List submissions in on time because of server issues, I would have to go to my team and say, “I had time to write these essays early and submit early, and I failed to do that. I’m sorry, but it is my fault that these did not get submitted.” It would be embarrassing to do this, but it would also show students the right way to apologize for something, instead of blaming something/someone else. It’s frustrating, yes, but the servers crashing are ALWAYS a possibility around awards submission times.
I’m sorry… Sorry that I trusted FIRST to be the gracious professionals they ask everyone else to be. When the government shut down, NASA graciously extended their deadline to submit for their grant even though there was time prior to submit. When snow storms affected numerous teams, FIRST graciously upped the withholding allowance even though, apparently, you can build a whole robot in three days.
If I told my students they had a deadline to turn something in and then I had a substitute on the day it was due who, for some reason, wouldn’t collect their assignments, I would graciously accept their work the following day to accommodate for the unexpected circumstance rather than tell them too bad.
Yes, this is the real world. Graciousness abounds in the real world. I’d expect FIRST, of all organizations, to live up to those ideals in this situation, and I’m sorry that in this case they are not.
The difference in your scenario is that the substitute refused on the SINGLE day the students were told to turn in an assignment.
The site has been open to accept essays for MONTHS now, giving us mentors plenty of days to submit before the 18 hours it was due. PLUS, the site came back up with at least 3 hours to spare.
I’ve had many teachers, professors and bosses tell me, “This is the deadline. Get it done early and turn it in, and that’s fine, but I will not accept it after the deadline, no matter what,” and they stick to that.
Three hours to spare in Indiana, no problem. Three hours to spare in Hawaii? The site was closed before I was even able to wake up.
Kudos to you and all those who submitted early. However, you dismiss cold heartedly a number of extremely worthy students that are being denied an opportunity for recognition that they deserve. If it wasn’t about the students, I, and I’m sure many others, wouldn’t be so upset.
I’m thoroughly confused by all of this. We know that FIRST has trouble handling big server loads. Game Manual on kickoff day. FIRST Choice. Chairman’s due date. It’s been well-documented that these are common problems, and we need to be proactive to mitigate the repercussions.
Besides, it’s like Carolyn_Grace said, the site was up and running and accessible at the time of the deadline. So, no, it’s not analogous to the government shutdown or a sub who wouldn’t accept work. Because when FIRST said it was due, they took it.
Having said this, I agree the system needs work. It’s not acceptable. But it happens.
Logistically, let’s look at the situation. If FIRST had given an extension, they likely would not have had time to properly process the Dean’s List nominations before Week 1 events. So even if they really really wanted to, I suspect in this case, their hands were tied.
Thank you for volunteering to review Deans List essays for week 1 events. Your volunteer coordinator will be contacting you shortly.
The system definitely needs work. That’s undeniable. I agree.
That said, if I was in a position where I needed to post essays by a certain time, I would set five different alarms to make sure that I woke up an hour before the deadline to try at least one more time. I’d do everything in my power to make it happen, and THEN if it still didn’t work I would complain about the system. In fact, I’ve done this with online university classes more than a couple times.