Very very confused second/third year with very big shoes to fill: what the hell do I do now?

[anon_team_member]

will not mention team number as I wish to stay anonymous. this is also a bit of a rant because this situation is stressing me out so excuse me if this comes out incoherent.

I’m a second year about to turn into a third year in my team, and with how things are going right now I’ll probably have to be engineering lead: which is a task neither I or my mentors think I am capable of doing, since I was always bad at engineering. the only thing I seem to be good at is CADing. yet it seems like I am the best/only option.

this year I worked on 2 systems of our bot. One was so easy nothing could fail and I failed to design the other one twice before it was given to someone else.

during my first year my team barely fielded our bot. howerver, this year we have accomplished some amazing feats which we have never done before. this is due to a very large third-year student base, which will be leaving very soon, leaving only me and one other third year student to lead the team. FRC being FRC, I am pretty aware of the fact that we will see a significant drop in both level of engineering and achievments.

Another thing which has been bothering me is the difference in attitude between me and every previous lead the team has had. Because we come from a fairly wealthy school we have always had access to most machines we have needed. This includes a mill, a CNC machine, a lathe, etc. Because of this, we have always been very competetive in attitude. However, I never really cared about winning the competition. I’m only doing this because robotics is my favorite thing ever and I enjoy the expirience. I feel like if I lead with this attitude, I am wasting the recources we have and going against my own team. but If I don’t, I know I’ll be miserable(and probably not even field the bot anyway due to the quality of engineering drop).

Finding another team isn’t an option since we don’t have many in my city.

I feel I don’t have the knowledge, skills, experience, or talent to fill the giant-sized shoes the previous leads left me, and will only waste the team’s time, energy, and recources if I take the job.

my quetion to you is:
what the hell do I even do now? do I quit? do I even run for engineering lead? do I stay where I am now?

[Billfred]

Here’s the dirty secret: every team’s second-year kids are leaving fairly soon. And that’s on the teams that aren’t pinched in for some other reason (like those who use FRC as a capstone program). And your team would hardly be the first to see a rockstar student graduate and have their shoes filled by someone with less real or perceived experience.

This is part of where having experienced mentors pays off: they can regulate the shock of personnel changes. I notice you didn’t mention mentors in your post; I’d talk to them and see what they think would be useful for you to develop in the coming months. It may not be as much engineering work as other career and leadership development; both are important to both you, a well-running FRC team, and other teams you’ll be on in life.

And as someone whose sole season as a student involved a drivetrain powered by window motors and a 2-5-1 record: even if your next season crashes and burns, the growth and development that comes with trying to make one of these things work is really valuable too. So I hope you can find a way to give it a shot without putting so much pressure on yourself that it becomes unhealthy.

[Jon_Stratis]

You do you. Do what’s going to be best for you, first and foremost. We have a saying on my team - “health, school, and then robotics”. We want everyone to keep themselves healthy above all else, and this includes mental health. After that, everyone needs to take the time they need to keep up with school. It doesn’t matter if you’re a freshman or a captain, when you have a big test tomorrow, you should probably study instead of playing with robots. After both of those are taken care of, then dedicate your time to robotics (and fine, other extra-curricular activities!)

Your team will survive. You don’t really need a lead thats all-in on winning. Those tools aren’t there to make you win, they’re there to help you and everyone else learn and grow, with winning being a happy side effect.

I’ll let you in on a little secret: teams change all the time. As their leadership changes, so does the attitude and actions of the team. It’s not a bad thing, and it’s something that mentors can help guide as it happens. I can tell you that my team is a very different team this year than we were pre-Covid. And that’s fine - we’re still having a great time, students are still engaged and learning, so I’m completely happy. The team is more focused on the experience right now than being competitive, which I think has taken some of the stress out of it (and we’re still doing just fine on the field!).

So, you do you. Do what makes you happy. If you’re a leader on the team next year, lead as yourself, not as the person you perceive a leader should be. Your team will be just fine, and may even find it better

[ASmith1675]

There’s quite a bit to unpack here, but based on your description of yourself, you would be someone who I’d consider an excellent candidate to lead a design/engineering team.

First, you’re a third-year student. No one should expect you to have all the answers or be able to design complicated subsystems without any help or support. Heck, I’ve been doing this 16 years and am continuously learning an trying to improve my own knowledge-base around design. The best engineers I work with know their strengths and weaknesses and work with their team to come up with a solution.

Second, what you’re feeling is called imposter syndrome. Basically, you don’t think your skill level is at a point where others think your skills are. I think everyone suffers from it at some point. There are probably several ways to work through it, but the one I typically hear is “fake it 'til you make it”. Acting confident in a role will make you confident. At the same time, don’t hesitate to lean on those around you, not just on your team but in the larger community. There are a lot of great FRC design resources around. “Good engineers design, great engineers steal.” Don’t be afraid to take and mold these designs to fit your team’s capabilities.

Third, I think your attitude about competitiveness is very healthy, especially in relation to this program. In my opinion, the real competitive aspect of FRC comes around in the strategy discussions and then the designs implement the strategy. Now, this can get a little dangerous when a team’s ambition outstrips their resources (whether that be financial, machining, or time). This is where someone like you might be able to say, “I don’t know if we have the ability to make “super-advanced-mechanism” this year, is there a way we can implement a similar strategy with something simpler/easier to build and design?”

The fact that you’ve mentioned CAD as one of your strengths is awesome. The great thing about CAD is you can design and “build” a bunch of robots for essentially just a time investment. Spend the offseason designing a bunch of mechanisms you liked from this year. CAD up a swerve drive base, a turret, an elevator. While you’re doing this think about how your team would be able to build it? Are there parts you couldn’t manufacture? Are there COTS parts which might solve some of the manufacturing problems? A lot of very successful teams release full CAD models of their robot every year. Dig into them, try to understand what they’re doing, and maybe even reach out to those teams if you have questions, in my experience anyone who releases public CAD models will be happy to talk to you about their design decisions.

Finally, talk to your team. In your description you don’t mention mentors, but they should be there to help and support you. They should be able to give you feedback on designs. Doing this in the offseason is far less stressful than in the crunch of build (which raises everyone’s stress levels). If one of your mentors can’t provide feedback, post some of your designs here. Constructive feedback is one of the best ways to learn.

TL;DR: Impostor syndrome is real, but there are ways to defeat it.

[Smoosh]

@anon_team_member

Another thing which has been bothering me is the difference in attitude between me and every previous lead the team has had.

Others have weighed in with some fantastic advice. I would like to point out that differences in attitude are incredibly common! Maybe not across all teams, but certainly many. Students don’t really see that because they’re not around for the lifetime of the program like some mentors. “This is the best robot the team has ever built!” says a student who doesn’t know what was built a few years ago.

So my advice is to not worry about it, and embrace it.

@anon_team_member

I feel like if I lead with this attitude, I am wasting the recources we have and going against my own team.

Part of being a leader is working with your team. I would talk to them about expectations. Taking a “less competitive” attitude might be wise with so many students leaving anyway? Most years the students on our team aren’t gung-ho about competition, and I’ve NEVER thought that in itself is wasting resources.

[swami_dm]

There are a lot of things in your post that I really like.

@anon_team_member

I’ll probably have to be engineering lead: which is a task neither I or my mentors think I am capable of doing, since I was always bad at engineering.

It’s obvious that you see an issue. Now what can you do to solve it? I wouldn’t expect a student to come up with all the answers by themselves. IF YOU NEED HELP, ASK. Have a conversation with your mentors.

You see an issue with Engineering Lead next year.
You don’t think you have the ability to be Engineering Lead.
What do WE need to do so I can be an affective Engineering Lead.
You also see an issue with second year students needing to fill lead roles.
You see an issue with team capabilities next year.

Asking these questions to your mentors would show that you would be a candidate for Engineering Lead. You’ve got a lot of time to work on this. It’s better to start now instead of September or even January. You’ll also find out that’s it’s easier to solve an issue the more time you have to solve it.

@anon_team_member

One was so easy nothing could fail and I failed to design the other one twice before it was given to someone else.

What you really failed at was not asking for help. I don’t expect any student to design a mechanism that they’ve never seen/designed before. Especially for CAD, if you are stuck ask for help. If you need engineering help like figuring out what gear reduction you need for a mechanism, ask a mentor to check your calculations. Have other mentors and students review your design to see if they see a problem. If no mentor on your team can help with engineering solutions, ask CD.

For you to get better at CAD, try to redesign this year’s robot. If your team has a custom drivetrain, keep doing it. I’ll let you in on a little CAD secret. Once you design something once, the next time you design it takes less time. Everyone that’s done CAD has had to redo their work because the system crashed and they didn’t save their work.

3847 has a collection of complete robot CAD here FRC CAD Collection - Spectrum3847 - Google Sheets

Look through the robots. Look at their mechanisms and with help from your mentors, see how your team could use your resources to do the same. The other thing that you’ll get by looking at other teams CAD is that you’ll see examples of what has been done, which will help you come up with ideas for mechanisms for next year’s game.

After you become Engineering Lead next year, remember gracious professionalism: It’s a way of doing things that encourages high-quality work (Do your best), emphasizes the value of others (Let others do their part, it’s not all on you. Ask for help if you need it. Ask if you can help), and respects individuals and the community (recognize that others are also doing their best, you don’t need to yell at someone or blame someone when they are doing their best).

[mfbrechting]

Excellent reply, Every time you are met with Imposters syndrome I like to look at the Dunning Kruger Graph. Last year you were near Mount Stupid and got a wake up call. Now you’re in the Valley of Dispair, but more knowledgeable than you were before. I like to take solace in these times that I am progressing and that the nearly every other person has been here and felt this way.

I suggest you talk to a mentor that you are comfortable with and ask them what skills they would suggest would be most helpful for you going into next season. The most helpful trick here would be as you learn these skills you organize your teammates to learn them with you.
Also as someone else has said, you personally will now need to learn leadership, communication, an potentially project management. Your effect on the teams success will likely stem mostly from the Leadership, Communication, and PM skills.

As you will find in industry, my boss was the best at our job. He was promoted to management, and now does a completely different job with different skills. Some people fly and some fall. If you don’t want the leadership and management responsibility, which is potentially perfectly fine, talk to the mentor leadership and ask if you can be an individual contributor.

[grstex]

Blockquote

@anon_team_member

I’m only doing this because robotics is my favorite thing ever and I enjoy the expirience. I feel like if I lead with this attitude, I am wasting the recources we have and going against my own team.

Not true. If you’re doing this because it makes you happy, then the rest will follow. I’m pretty sure your parents, teachers, and mentors (and teammates) would choose a growth-focused team that’s happy over a “competitive” team that’s miserable.

You’ll do fine, even if you struggle. And you’ll likely find growth in the end no matter how your team does, and that’s more important than any trophy. To quote Breńe Brown: “I believe that you have to walk through vulnerability to get to courage, therefore…embrace the suck.”

[memtech3]

I don’t have all of the answers but here’s what I do have

Many teams have struggled with /will struggle with / are struggling with loss of knowledge due to the aftermath of the pandemic. The pandemic wiped out membership on many teams and deprived students of the opportunity to learn through and experience a competition season.

As for your dedication and attitude: Doing this because making robots is your favorite thing in the world is absolutely the right attitude to have. If anyone tells you otherwise you can have them call me (visit my website for my discord) and I will impart my wisdom from almost 4 years on a well performing team onto them.

My attitude: Although I have a drive to win and do well, I made it clear to my team that as long as we gave it our all, I would be proud of us because at the end of the day we, a group of high school students, built a robot and learned and used skills that many grown adults struggle with. If we don’t make the cut for district champs, if we fell flat on our faces at our district events, that just means we have an opportunity to build our skills and train underclassmen without the pressure of performing well at a competition.

As for filling the role of engineering lead: It’s challenging to lead others, let alone take responsibility for an entire robot subteam. My team deals with this by having several subteam captains and then two overall team captains, all of us work closely together to guide the team and address team issues.

As for your “lack of skill”: Being proficient at CAD means you’re already ahead of the game. Now all you have to do is learn how to design. This can be accomplished in many ways but the way I’d recommend you do it is by spending time with your current/former leaders going over their design choices and intent, and by looking at other well performing teams’ designs. Pick one that is part of the openalliance, find their build thread, and follow along. Also, pick a mechanism to design and build offseason. If y’all have money and mentors, designing and building a robot offseason will really boost your skills and confidence. I speak from experience when I say that all of the pieces fit together once you get thrown into the mess of a season.

If you ever need to to consult with more experienced FRC members, reach out and I will help you where I can or connect you with a more qualified member or alum.

End of passionate ramblings

[Akash_Rastogi]

@swami_dm

3847 has a collection of complete robot CAD here FRC CAD Collection - Spectrum3847 - Google Sheets

Look through the robots. Look at their mechanisms and with help from your mentors, see how your team could use your resources to do the same. The other thing that you’ll get by looking at other teams CAD is that you’ll see examples of what has been done, which will help you come up with ideas for mechanisms for next year’s game.

This is how I learned how to become a decent robot designer my junior year of high school. I want to emphasize though that I want you to ask us for help. There’s tons of mentors online who live and breath this stuff and love teaching and helping students like you who very clearly have the potential to be amazing design kids. When I was starting out you wouldn’t believe how many mentors on CD I would constantly send questions to via PM, always chatting with other students via social media.

Ask for help and advice! It is the best way to grow early on.

[UnofficialForth]

Fear of Inadequacy
“Carl, if all you do is talk at competitions, that’s fine by me, but I’d like you to stay in your position.”
I remember those words very clearly. It was the only thing that kept me from quitting my position as Business lead on my team. I had never done any business at all. I ran for the position because another student had told me that if we didn’t oust the only opposition, we were going to lose two very important mentors. So I ran a campaign promise on student-mentor unity, and ended up winning the position.
After a few weeks in the position, I realized I really wanted to leave it. I much preferred my time working with the programming team. I was convinced by the student President and teacher mentor when they said all I had to do was “talk at the next competition”.
In hindsight, I did much more than. I rallied students and mentors around a common goal, pushed them to be better, and accel in outreach and presentation. We won our first Chairman’s that year.

On Being A Leader
Since those days, I’ve learned a lot. The most important thing?

“Being a leader isn’t about being in charge, it’s about taking care of people in your charge.” - Simmon Sinek.

You are in a unique position, because while you may feel like you don’t have the skills, you love your team, you love the people you work with, and you love your program. That’s what you need. The ability to care for the people around you. As a leader, your job isn’t the robot, your job is to take care of the other students. By allowing them to succeed, it will turn out a better culture which will result in a better team.

I highly suggest watching the following:
Goal Setting - Mike Corsetto
Trusting Teams - Simmon Sinek
Leader Vs Manager - Simmon Sinek

You post makes me feel you will be a very strong leader, but definitely different from past one. If no one else has told you, let me be the first: “I believe in you.”

Let me know if you have any questions, I’m happy to help!

[NewtonCrosby]

@anon_team_member

and with how things are going right now I’ll probably have to be engineering lead: which is a task neither I or my mentors think I am capable of doing, since I was always bad at engineering. the only thing I seem to be good at is CADing. yet it seems like I am the best/only option.

In my life experience as both a father of teenager(s) and as a mentor, the most difficult thing to process for young people is that they aren’t a complete build yet. Your brains and bodies are still developing, so despite the fact that today you are (hopefully) smarter and more capable than you have ever been in your entire life, the truth is, tomorrow you will be incrementally smarter and more capable than you are today. You absolutely have not peaked yet in your short life span, so having the defeatism in mind that you’re not capable of performing that function doesn’t serve you or your team.

How about this simple exercise, and I mean this completely seriously, is re-write the statement you have in your post as the following:

… which is a task neither I or my mentors think I am capable of doing RIGHT NOW. I seem to have CAD skills which is why I may be the best candidate, but RIGHT NOW I don’t have the design skills to lead the construction of an entire robot.

The real question for your developing brain is, what resources are available that are capable and committed to helping you grow INTO that role.

Now here’s the real talk:
You’re a high school kid. There are very few high school kids out there that are capable of being an engineering lead ON THEIR OWN to design a capable robot. Odds of you being one of them are slim to none. The amount of math, physics, intuition, life experience, etc necessary is just not something that kids have experienced. So, yes, you are incapable. Who cares?

The design of FIRST is to have students, with mentors, learning these principles. So, as a team, you should be able to grow together. Mentors are the grand constant on a first team, students always come and go.

So, while I understand it is very difficult for your still developing brain to have a longer perspective than you have life experience, just trust me when I saw, you’re going to be fine. Make a plan with your mentors about HOW TO GROW into the engineering lead position.

This may mean that you design a robot one subsystem at a time. Re-cad your robot from the ground up. Take photos of other mechanisms, from other robots, and see if you can design them to function with your robot. If that seems to hard, build a drivetrain. Once you can build a drivetrain, build an intake, etc.

Just keep building, and as your skills grow, your capability to lead will also grow. Also remember that building and designing things make you a good engineer. The skills required to be an engineering lead are not necessarily the same.

Good luck. Don’t quit on the thing that brings you joy in your life as a teenager. There’s plenty of time in your future to NOT do the things you love doing for reasons, now isn’t the time.

[Jake177]

There are a lot of good responses here already. One piece of advice I’ll add is to have a discussion about team goals with the other members of your team. It sounds like some of your team members have different criteria for what they would consider a “successful” season, and that’s okay. Discussing these differences, and coming to a consensus on what goals the team as a whole will be working towards, can be a helpful way to address these differences.

One of the great things about this program is that individual teams can create their own personal definitions of success. Sometimes that’s building a robot that can keep pace with the top-tier teams. Sometimes that’s just giving students the opportunity to explore concepts that they otherwise would not have a chance to learn.

[snichols]

I second the advice about meeting with your mentors. Be very honest about your concerns, the skills you think you have and the ones you think you don’t, and the time commitment you will realistically be able to make next year. Tell them you want to help the team as much as you can, but are not sure you’re up for being team captain.

They may decide to give you the position anyway, or decide another student is better suited for it, or decide there won’t be a student captain next year. Depending on the team culture, they may decide the mentors need to take over some responsibilities for next year that would normally fall on the student captain.

Any way it goes, at the end of the day this is your mentors’ problem to solve; you should not be laying awake at night stressing about it. The best you can do is be honest with them about your concerns and boundaries, and trust them to find a solution. If they haven’t earned that trust from you, that’s a whole separate problem. But in my 8 years of mentoring, it’s not uncommon to find out a student’s been really stressed about something we already have a solution mostly worked out for.