Tuesday, November 09, 2004
Sour Grapes (or Tell no Whine Before Its Time)
Some of you faithful readers out there may recall that I was involved in the formation of the Underwood High School Robotics Team last year. This despite a complete lack of training, programming skills, and serious student commitment. In the end meetings devolved into attempts to customize robots so they looked like insects or other creations using shortcuts to program in funky dance maneuvers and so forth. Of the five students who regularly showed up, two or three were always fooling around, and I had to constantly remind them that they were in the computer lab to program robots not surf the web or check e-mail.
Based partly on my experience last year, but more on the increased time commitment pressure I would be under this fall (2 grad courses, some leadership stuff with friends downtown, 5 classes instead of 3 and so forth), I decided to bow out from the robot game for the time being especially when another teacher volunteered to take up the challenge. Not only that, but she thought we could involve our kids in an ambitious program inovlving robot construction with real servos, motors, electronics, and so forth. Almost too ambitious, I thought, and decided to decline when asked to be co-sponsor.
So of course what happens next? The Underwood High School robotics team goes off and wins the state competition!
I'm simultaneously very proud of my former students (a few of whom are still on the team) and annoyed at myself for (I think) obvious reasons. Of course the team does well...now that I'm not involved!
Petty? I know. But you don't come here simply for calm, reasoned explanations of everything...do you?
Some of you faithful readers out there may recall that I was involved in the formation of the Underwood High School Robotics Team last year. This despite a complete lack of training, programming skills, and serious student commitment. In the end meetings devolved into attempts to customize robots so they looked like insects or other creations using shortcuts to program in funky dance maneuvers and so forth. Of the five students who regularly showed up, two or three were always fooling around, and I had to constantly remind them that they were in the computer lab to program robots not surf the web or check e-mail.
Based partly on my experience last year, but more on the increased time commitment pressure I would be under this fall (2 grad courses, some leadership stuff with friends downtown, 5 classes instead of 3 and so forth), I decided to bow out from the robot game for the time being especially when another teacher volunteered to take up the challenge. Not only that, but she thought we could involve our kids in an ambitious program inovlving robot construction with real servos, motors, electronics, and so forth. Almost too ambitious, I thought, and decided to decline when asked to be co-sponsor.
So of course what happens next? The Underwood High School robotics team goes off and wins the state competition!
I'm simultaneously very proud of my former students (a few of whom are still on the team) and annoyed at myself for (I think) obvious reasons. Of course the team does well...now that I'm not involved!
Petty? I know. But you don't come here simply for calm, reasoned explanations of everything...do you?
