A disappointing day for my (non-existent) hope of goodwill in my robotics mentors.
Our team had planned on doing FIRST Impact, and our mentors submitted it late *after* telling us they would handle it, it would be fine, blah blah blah. The mentors then tell the business channel in Slack that there were technical difficulties but it was "now in the hands of FIRST." Which one would assume means it was submitted and it was all good.
Nope.
It wasn't submitted on time, the mentors knew they wouldn't get extra time, told the channel otherwise, and only told a few people in a private DM. One kid had raised concerns about it not being turned in on time, EST vs PST, and the lack of communication.
He hadn't shown up for a few days, I thought he was sick. No. He was fired. For questioning the mentors and "being out of line." Regardless of if someone was out of line or not, kicking someone from the team should only happen if they did something egregiously bad, not questioning a mentor.
I really enjoy robotics, but it's frustrating. When stuff like this happens, when a mentor expresses his disdain that *I* of all people am probably going to be a lead next year, and all the little things, it somethings makes leaving the team seem like a good idea. I'd love to hope that people can be trusted-ish, and then they make sure I know how mistaken I was. Sure, I'll deal with this plenty when I have a job, but for now we're highschoolers, and we just want to build a robot, not deal with all the BS that people seem to love.
tl;dr
Don't blatantly lie to people, and COMMUNICATE with others. It seems that's the story of my life given how many times I have to say it.
#FRC #frcrobotics #FIRST #robotics #students #communication #lies
Well, this is going to be a shit show. Apparently I don't even know half of it, and from how the co-captain made it sound it's a whole lot worse. Everyone messed up and we're having a team meeting about this tomorrow, which shows just how bad it is. And to make it even better, our first competition is in a week and we aren't ready at all.
@aberrant68 so you're right that being open and communicating are key.
A great thing about FRC is that (most) mentors don't know the right answers to every problem, so we're more like peers learning together with the students. Over time the mentors gain enough experience that they can guide students to avoid pitfalls and stay on track. Sometimes mentor egos can be a thing so hopefully there are enough other adults to keep things stable.
I think students should be able to ask questions about how things are managed, because having students take leadership in as many areas as possible in award submissions, sponsor relations, outreach, and robot design and build is kind of the goal. I try to be open and honest with everyone on the team about team management stuff, finance, resources - and when I've screwed something up. Students taking ownership is when we've been most successful in both awards and robot.
The impact award and the WFFA nomination are student submissions, so my role is to recruit and talk with the students who will be responsible, make sure they have started work, see if they need help and get them help as needed, make sure they're ready as the deadline approaches, make sure they can access the award submissions portal, in the case of the impact award help review the text and suggest edits with other mentors or students, and then confirm that the submissions are done before the deadline. Students can screw up, so mentoring means keeping and eye out to make sure that doesn't take the team down.
And mentors screw up, so if something didn't get done on time, and you want it to go better next time, all the information about the awards deadlines, requirements, submissions, etc., is available on the website for you to access, and I'm sure the team, including mentors, would appreciate you or another student learning those details and being a resource for the team on them. There's a lot to learn in FRC - I think it took me about 7 seasons to feel generally competent all-round as a mentor - so any mentor will almost never be on top of every detail, and I'm grateful when a student has done the reading and knows more than I do on some topic.
