Blog Archives

Do I have to be an Engineer?

10/28/2017

A Reminder: Not Everyone has to be an Engineer

As participants in FIRST, there is a lot of encouragement to go into engineering. We hear this a lot because it makes a lot of sense---if you like being on a robotics team, you’ll make a good engineer. Right? Well, maybe.

FIRST is really good at preparing teenagers for future careers in STEM fields. But there is so much more FIRST teaches than just the engineering aspect. FIRST has taught me essentially how to run a small business through design work, organizational work, experience as a leader, financial management, and so much more.

Now that I’m a junior in high school, I am flooded with questions about what I’m going to do after high school. I’ve always assumed, because I’ve always been on robotics teams, that I’ll end up in engineering one way or another. This has been partly due to FIRST’s messaging. But in looking more closely, I found that the parts of robotics that I enjoy the most are rarely the technical aspects. I’ve always enjoyed team branding over building and design work over drive team. But while FIRST does a great job providing examples of successful engineers that I could be like someday, rarely do I see examples of how FIRST helped someone become a graphic designer or businesswoman. FIRST has prepared me to go into those career fields too, so why do I not feel as encouraged pursue them?

This blog was written by anonymous. If you are interested in blogging for FIRST Ladies, click here to sign up on the schedule.

1 Comment

How to be a Good Teammate

10/21/2017

0 Comments

What it Means to Be a Good Teammate
As members of FIRST Robotics teams, knowing how to work well within a team is one of the most important skills we learn. Nothing we do on our teams is entirely individual, and the best solutions require collaboration. Even in the workforce, most projects are team projects. With that said, here are some of ways I’ve learned to be a good teammate:

Don’t be a Dictator
- This is something I struggle with. I fall easily into leadership roles, and I’m also the type of person who likes things done certain ways. But over my years in FIRST, it has been incredibly important for me to learn how to lead without taking over. The difference between being a leader and a dictator is in your ability to listen and motivate your team members. I have had to learn how to listen to other ideas without dismissing them, and without assuming my own idea is the best. It’s a hard thing to do, but once you give your team members a chance to be heard, you give them a chance to share their cool ideas they might not have shared otherwise.
Be Reliable
- This is pretty straightforward. You want to be someone your teammates can rely on. Follow through on your commitments, do what you say you’re going to do, and be present when you say you will.
Ask for Help
- There are times you will take on more than you can chew. While it is important to try working outside of your comfort zone, it is also important to ask for help when you know you’ll need it. It stinks when someone takes on a project the team is depending on them for and then they can’t meet the deadline because they’ve been floundering by themselves. Ask for help early and often, especially if you’ve taken on a project you know you won’t have ready on time. Your team is there to help you!
Commit to the Level you are Able
- This ties into reliability. Honor your commitments, and commit to the extent that you can. Keeping this in mind, try not to over commit, FIRST is only worthwhile if you enjoy what you’re doing. It’s important to understand what you and your teammates have outside of robotics. Everyone has school, some work, some have other extracurriculars, some have religious commitments, and everyone should leave time to take care of themselves. Try not to do too much, and try to understand why people on your team may not be able to do as much as you.
Keep it Positive
- No one wants to work with Oscar the Grouch. People value working with people that are happy and motivated. Everyone has bad, stressful days, and that’s ok. But in the same way that one bad attitude can bring down the whole room, one positive attitude can brighten the whole room.
Be OK with Failure
- Failure happens. It stinks, but it happens. Part of keeping a positive attitude is knowing when to take failure and run with it. Good teammates are those who are able to acknowledge when something doesn’t work as planned, and choose to see failure as a learning experience. There’s a lot to learn when something goes wrong, so look for ways to improve rather than getting dragged down by failure.
Communicate
- This is one of the most important skills to learn. Because you are part of a team that will assume credit for all the work done by individuals within the team, your team should know what you’re doing. It may be easier and more efficient for you to work alone, but it’s not in the team’s best interest. Working without communicating your work can seem to your team that you’re uninterested or don’t trust the rest of your team to help you. Not only that, but you may not know if you’re even going down the right path.

So those are my tips! No one person is going to be good at everything on my list, but I have found it worthwhile to look at myself and find things to improve upon to make myself a better resource within my team.

This blog was written by anonymous. If you are interested in blogging for FIRST Ladies, click here to sign up on the schedule.

0 Comments

Tips for Rookie Teams!

10/14/2017

1 Comment

Tips and Tricks for a Rewarding Season
By: Kate Huelskamp

Miscellaneous Tips

Don’t Attempt All the Challenges
- The game generally includes several challenges of varying difficulty (and points!), one good strategy is picking several challenges to focus on in the beginning and mastering those and then adding a few more. This can help to make sure that your robot is as strong as possible.
Don’t Change Your Field
- When you’re assembling or building your field keep your field as similar as possible to the fields you saw at Kickoff. If you didn’t/don’t have a chance to get to Kickoff follow the game manuals instructions exactly. Use the same materials, dimensions, and everything as the game manual.
Learn Something New
- This tip is easily the most important. Your rookie year is the best time to try all the different jobs on a robotics team. Just try them all and if you find one or two you enjoy then get really good at those fields.
Be Creative
- This one needs very little explanation, but it’s good to try out different ideas because you never know what will work best. It’s good to get inspired by what other teams have done, but try to keep your robot your own.
Apply For Grants
- Building robots are expensive and costs can rack up fast what with purchasing the field, the hardware, and licenses for the software. Luckily, there are lots of grants out there that can help cut some costs. Most major tech companies have grants for both rookie and veteran teams and the applications are fairly simple to fill out,
Try an Online Notebook
- It might sound trivial, but an online notebook allows you to move stuff around during the middle of the season. It’s easier to transfer code and you can just screenshot your CAD or code over. As well, your entire team can work on it at the same time and everyone has access to it 24/7! A feat impossible with handwritten notebooks. Judges prefer being able to read one font instead of having to decipher 8 different handwriting styles.
Create a Team Email and a Website
- This way other teams can find you and contact you for whatever reason. Maybe they want to invite you to a scrimmage or a demonstration, and if they can’t contact you they can’t invite you. You don’t even have to pay for either! Most teams use either a Google site or a third provider (Weebly works well) for their website and any email organization for their email.
Do Some Outreach
- Outreach allows you to be a contender for more awards and it’s a great way of spreading the news about FIRST! It might seem a bit daunting at first, but it’s really quite simple. Try asking your school if you can demonstrate your robot at a school assembly or pep rally or ask a sponsor or another outside organization if you can demonstrate your robot at their company.
It’s Easier to Qualify at an Earlier Tournament
- If your team can get everything performing well, you are more likely to qualify for State because most teams are not ready yet and so don’t perform as well. In the beginning, there are more spots open for qualifying, so that helps increase the odds, too. Of course, there are no guarantees because who knows what’s going to happen.
Share Your Code and Your CAD Designs
- This is an inter-team thing. But, if you share your code and CAD, everyone has the most recent version which is helpful if somebody's sick or their computer crashes at a tournament. This way everyone can edit stuff at home without having to worry if their code’s old.

Tips for Tournaments

Bring Extra to Tournaments
- Guess what? When you get to the tournament everything -and I mean everything- is going to break down, so us veteran teams like to bring robot parts and tools to our tournaments, so we can fix our robots between matches. It’s generally a good idea to bring extra of everything on your robot from screws to motor controllers. Finally, don’t be afraid to ask other teams for help fixing your robot or for spare parts (if you need them for your robot).
Scout
- This is another tournament must. Scouting is helpful to know what another team can do. Teams usually do two types of scouting: match scouting and team scouting. Team Scouting happens generally in the beginning of the competition and when representatives of each team go talk to other teams and ask them about what they do during autonomous and teleop. This can also give you an idea of how your two teams would collaborate. The one problem of team scouting is that every robotics team talks up their capabilities and that’s why we have match scouting. Match Scouting is just when a representative of your team sits in the stand and records what happens in a match: how many points are scored and by who.
Create a Pit Display
- Only do this if you have time, but a Pit display can help make your team look professional and help other teams locate you for scouting. Some teams do a poster board of their accomplishments, others have a banner, and some have tents. Most teams include pictures of themselves and their robots, their sponsors, and the outreach they have done in their pit display. Quite a few teams leave candy or business cards for people to take, but it’s not necessary.

This blog was written by Kate Huelskamp of FTC 6699 Tempest
Want to blog? Sign up here

1 Comment

Top Five Tips for rookies

10/8/2017

0 Comments

1. Befriend other teams who can help.
It’s one of the most valuable things that you can get out of FIRST. Trust me, building connections and friendships with these other teams will change your life. There’s just so much to learn from other teams, and so much to be shared within teams that all you really need to do is ask for it. There are sooooooo manyyyyy teams out there that are 1000000000% willing to help and answer questions! Experienced teams know so much, and as rookies (with the learning curve being so steep, espeically with the technical side of things), having veteran teams mentor or help out will really be nice. I know that older teams can be intimidating sometimes, and you might feel like you’re not good enough to talk to them, but teams are literally the nicest people out there! Most of the teams I’ve met are super duper excited and easy to talk to. The first thing I always recommend rookies do is to create a Twitter account and start following/connecting with other FTC teams. There is a giant network of FTC teams, and it helps in a tremendous way to be a part of it.

2. Things are going to go wrong, and that’s okay.
There’s a saying in FIRST, “anything that can go wrong-- will go wrong”. And yes, that’s totally a hyperbole, but it’s there because there will be times when you’ll feel that way. Especially the week/night before the tournament, it’ll feel like utter chaos and that so many things are going wrong. And that’s totally normal. Most teams have extremely late nights before the tournaments and are almost always scrambling to pack and prepare. Things are going to fail, I guarantee you, and the way to handle that is to stay calm and start trying out different ways that you think might fix it. Freaking out will literally just ruin the fun and will get you nowhere (trust me, I’ve tried). That’s also another thing I love about FIRST, is how much of the real world you get to experience- the failing part. Before I joined FIRST, I never realized how failing is actually a good thing. As a straight A student, I couldn’t stand failing, but now, I embrace it. The only way to really learn and understand something, is to fail first. That way, your mistakes are memorable and you won’t make them again. The biggest advice I had towards this is to keep learning, keep trying, and never ever give up. Constructive criticism is your best friend.

3.Tournaments are stressful, but so much FUN.
Everyone is a winner. You might think that sounds super stupid, considering only a few teams actually advance to the next tournament, but trust me when I say, everyone is a winner. You are a winner no matter what because of the wonderful experience you got out of FIRST, the friends you made, the skills you’ve learned, and how much you’ve grown as a person. FIRST changes people for the better, and just gave you an unforgettable experience, so no matter what, you are a winner. Tournaments are extremely stressful, espeically for the technical team, who’s trying to last minute debug autonomous code, fix issues with the robot, and still make it on time to their next match. It’s hard to describe, and no matter how long I describe it, you’ll never realize how much fun it actually is until you go to one yourself. It’s stressful and hard, but boy, oh boy, is it a ton of fun. “The hardest fun you’ll ever have” lives up to its name.

4. It’s not only the robot.
I know we’re in a sport called “robotics”, but there’s so so so so so so much more than the robot and the technical side of things. I work on building, programming, and CADing on our team, so I very much love the technical side of things, but there’s so much that I have got out of FIRST than just learning new technical skills. It depends on your team if you want to be more of a robot team or an awards team (outreach focused)-- there have been both types of teams that do extremely well, so there’s no right answer. I would highly recommend doing both as much as you can. Doing outreach is extremely eyeopening. Learning the process of how to cold call companies to set up demos, tours, and sponsorship presentations and especially being able to go to these super cool events and tell people about how much you love FIRST is just such a furfilling feeling. I love seeing little kids and honestly, people of all ages get excited about driving a robot and asking me questions. These outreach events have really helped our team in judging, but also help each team member grow as a person.

5. Weird little FTC robot tips (that I wish I knew)
This is just a random list of some weird FTC tips that I wish someone had told me when I was a rookie.

Most likely be last minute programming at the tournament
Have utility code prepared even before builders are done
Make scouting sheets (or at least be prepared to scout) for tournaments
Stay active on social media/e-mail year round to not miss outreach opportunities
Find experienced mentors or FIRST alumni to listen to your judging presentation
Don’t forget “Deans List” exists
Remember to talk slowly during judging

This blog was written by anonymous. If you are interested in blogging for FIRST Ladies, click here to sign up on the schedule.

0 Comments

Do I have to be an Engineer?

How to be a Good Teammate

Tips for Rookie Teams!

Top Five Tips for rookies

Be a guest ​author!

Archives

Be a guest

author!