I guess what I’m really wondering is when do most of you guys get back together with your teams? Some people have said they continue things through the summer. Do most teams wait until school starts up to work on things? What about fund raising, when is most of that done? Just curious as to how long I’m gonna be waiting before I can work with a new team.
C~ya,
Carolyn 
Working throughout the year is very hard. We tried it several times on team 7 but nothing ever came out of it. For the most part, after nationals at least, a lot of people (myself included) get burned out. Starting large scale projects related to FIRST just isn’t going to happen (I still am amazed people pull of post-season competitions). I generally need several months to fully recover from a FIRST season (sounds like a lot but not really). It’s also harder to get students together over the summer which puts severe limits on communication and getting things done. Things start up slowly in the beginning of the school year and pick up the closer we get to kickoff. From kickoff until nationals it’s fairly non-stop. Rinse and repeat.
Matt who thinks he’s been doing FIRST too long at this point…
You can never do something you enjoy too long. When it feels like too long that means you don’t really enjoy it anymore. Sometimes if you take a break you enjoy the aactivity again.
C~ya,
Carolyn
*Originally posted by Carolyn Duncan *
**You can never do something you enjoy too long. When it feels like too long that means you don’t really enjoy it anymore. Sometimes if you take a break you enjoy the aactivity again.
C~ya,
Carolyn **
I didn’t actually mean I’ve done it too long. Just that it feels like a long time (4 years). I feel old now and have too much veteran status for my own good. I might let it go to my head. 
Matt
After Nationals, our team doesn’t do much at all. We have our end of the year awards night, post season comps, the Cubs game, and maybe some small random events. But we don’t have any formal meetings or do much work with the robot, except for preparation for post season comps, but then it’s just a few adults and students.
Then when the school year starts in late August, we start our class. We’re improving it from what we’ve done in the past, so we’re not sure what it will be yet. We’ll definately do our team’s mini-competition (thanks again Andy for the parts) and we’ll also have a lecture type portion but we don’t know what we’ll cover there yet. So by kickoff, we’re almost running at full speed.
Mike
I’m curious to know which two people voted not until kick off. Which teams are you on and how well have you all done in the past?
C~ya,
Carolyn
i voted not until kickoff
I voted other because we have no place really to meet and practice during the summer. Any meetings we have are held at my house where we cram everyone into my tv room. We keep in touch over e-mail and run fundraisers through the summer, and the captains have meetings to work on stuff over the summer also.
i voted on ‘Keep practicing and fundrasing all year’ because not only do we meet in our shop everyday after school (after robotics season it’s optional), but during the summer we have to meet to write thank you letters and fundraise for next season. When school starts again in the fall, we will have classes afterschool to prime prospective FIRST-ers so they can help the returnees more during the season and also understand more about the competition.
on our team, there is a certain group of students that works year-round and the other group only is around during the season. but we try to do fundraisers during the summer. it’s really hard to get some people motivated.
We really stop at the end of school and then start back up again at the beginning, but throughout the summer a really small group of us do demos at various different spots (Like the DC trip previously mentioned on this board).
~Tom~
Tom doesn’t various different seem a little bit over redundant to you? Come on now, you’re suposed to be one of the smart guys.
C~ya,
Carolyn who likes to pick on “Dangerous” Tom. 
I originally voted that we only worked during the school year, but then I realized that we often work harder in the summer than after florida. We generally don’t do anything for at least a month after Nats. After that we generally do several things a month, through the end of August. Then the new team starts and we go at a slightly slower pace.
For example, last Monday we put on a dinner for our sponsors and last thursday we had a day for any student to drive the robot, so that when it comes time to pick drivers for next year, everyone has had at least a little experience driving. Then next tuesday we have a demo outside the Boeing Cafeteria, where we will try to entice engineers to look at our robot and sign up to help other teams instead of eat
Too bad I can’t change my vote …
You sorta have changed your vote. You ahve not changed the statistics part but you have spoken, I think newspapers call that a retraction.
C~ya,
Carolyn
My team isn’t all that big and most of us always seems to be around year round to begin with (before we joined first as a team).
Thats a good question. After Nationals we do a lot of demo’s. We have 9 elementary schools in our town, we try and bring the robot around showing the kids, they love it, and its fun for us too. We fundraise almost all year, we do a lot of fundraising in the summer, it might sound crazy but it works pretty good. During build season we are so wrapped up in with the robot time is really important. Fundraising in the summer and fall helps because it is one less thing on our list during the 6 weeks but we still do stuff in the build season.
-Katie
GregT, What were you guys beforeyou joined as a FIRST team? A group of robot people who played with tools all the time?
C~ya,
Carolyn
*Originally posted by Carolyn Duncan *
**GregT, What were you guys beforeyou joined as a FIRST team? A group of robot people who played with tools all the time?
C~ya,
Carolyn **
Um… we were a bunch of kids who hung around the same tech room all day, screwed with computers, blew things up, and made one assistant principal very mad. We also welded stuff togeather because we had nothing better to do.
FIRST came along (thanks to patrick) and we just started being a bit more productive. Of course none of us welded anything because we all stunk at it, and welding alluminum is a bit MORE then tricky.
Oh, I see. You guys went from destructive to constructive. Sounds good to me.
C~ya,
Carolyn
No, we are still destructive, we are just constructive as well.