FIRST robotics sucked.

So in highschool I was part of 2410 Metal Mustangs, a FIRST robotics competition (FRC) team. For those who don’t know about FRC, it’s a robotics competition centered around a sport like competition. Usually 6 different teams from 6 different high schools  duke it out on two alliances (teams) per match. Each team would have 6 weeks to build their robot according to competition rules.

When I left highschool I’m pretty sure that I was in love with FIRST (or at least liked it) like all the other graduating seniors on my team. It had opened my eyes to a whole new career path. Before FIRST I’m not even sure if I could tell you what engineers did, now I’m going to a school that only offers engineering degrees. It did good things for me, but looking back, the experience actually sucked.

I was on a team of about 40~50 members (which would be considered huge) and maybe about a dozen on and off mentors. I’m pretty sure most people on my team would agree that the bulk of the work was done by maybe 10 people. And it’s not like the rest of the team were slackers or incompetent, it’s just the elite echelon of “geniuses” would take it upon themselves to “lead” the team. After two years of actually working on teams in college, I’ve learned that being a leader did not mean “I’m going to come up with the concept, design it, build it by myself, and you guys will just do the boring stuff I don’t want to do” like it did during most of my FIRST experience.

Back then I was in awe of their supreme programing capabilities, their lengthy fabrication experience, knowledge of black magic circuitry, etc, and came to the conclusion that I was just not capable of building a robot like they could. Now when I think about what it takes to build a robot, sure it’s still difficult, but it’s nothing that you couldn’t teach to high school freshmen.

I feel like people’s motivations were misplaced. There was not enough of a teaching atmosphere, where you wouldn’t be treated like moron for not knowing what nuts and bolts were. People seemed to always have a need to prove to others that they were competent. There was a  long list of technobabble that people frequently used, “CIMs”, “mecanum wheels”, “the wireless”, “jaguars,”  to name a few. Maybe if the team had actually spent 30 minutes going over vocabulary before building, then more people could have actually participated in helping design and fabricate. Instead it was like “bla bla bla wireless bla bla bla malfunction bla bla” and the average team member would have no idea what that means, so a “leader” would have to fix the problem.

I’m not entirely guiltless. I spent most of those two year on the team trying to catch up to the “elite”. In that time I’m sure I’ve scoffed at many a newbies who didn’t know how to use a socket wrench. In fact going to college, I was definitely motivated by “I’m going to show those people! I’m gonna get so much knowledge gainz, and be better at building things than they ever could!”

And I’d be lying if I said that isn’t still motivating. But it also makes me a little bit sad. This mentality is what chases young people out of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). People who think: “that stuff isn’t for me, I’m not smart enough,” all because someone further along the path needed the ego trip.

Even though I’m pointing fingers, I don’t think those kids were actually to blame, (some of them were snobs, but some of them were actually really nice). This weird power hierarchy has probably been going on since the formation of our team.

I don’t think this is something that can be fixed by student members. I think that in order to make actual lasting change, mentors must make an effort to level the playing field. Even a simple powerpoint before build season starts, outlining what it actually takes to build a robot (ie. this is a robot, it has a frame, motors, sensors, code, wireless communication) so that the new kids don’t feel like they’re tossed into a labyrinth without a map. That and the mentors need to stop picking favorites. I found that I didn’t get to know most of the mentors because they were always crowded around the kid who was actually doing things (why? Because no one else were given the tools to do it).

And I guess for you kids stuck in the same shitty situation right now, the best thing you can do is to be shameless in asking questions. It feels awful admitting to not knowing something that seems simple but honestly how else are you going to learn what it is (I’m getting lots of practice with this right now during this internship)? And when you do become a badass pool of knowledge, return the favor and give judgment-free advice.