seg9585: seg9585: Can I ask a logistical question here – reading the blog (which is amazing, by the way), how were you able to accomplish just the amount of time dedication to the team during the build season? I counted a total of 3 Rest Days. How can the mentors juggle it with work and family, and avoid burnout? How do the students handle it with homework, midterms, etc?

Our team has had to basically shut down for a week in late January because of midterm exams. Putting in 8 hours a day every single day just isn’t practical.

We were able to do what we did without a large amount of burnout mostly because we had a large enough team that the load would not be placed on just a few individuals.

During the build season we had four rest days (these are all in the blog), all Mondays, excluding the first Monday, when we just starting the season, and the last one, which was during a week off from school so the students who wanted to were able to come. After we bagged up the robot, we all took a couple of days off. Also after bag and tag, our blog posts became less frequent (as did attendance), and so days of rest were not officially noted on the blog, though Mondays were still days of rest.

Additionally, lab safety policies put a cap on occupants, so the team limited signups for the lab to 3 days per week for students, though this was only enforced on weekdays when more students wanted to come, so I would often be there 4-5 days per week during build season. This limit allowed me to choose which days I would not attend, and so I would check my schedule to align that for when I have a test (as a sidenote, Bellarmine did not have official midterms, just big tests spread throughout the semester, so we dodged that bullet). I often was at the lab between 5 and 10 most days, and since school got out at about 3, I had a daily 2 hour block for homework. Any additional homework was done in the mornings before school.

The key to balancing robotics, school, and the rest of one’s life (so as to avoid burnout) from my experience has been making a schedule and sticking to it. When I say “lab between 5 and 10” I meant it, the latest I ever left was 10:36. Schedules are also easiest to keep when they are regular, so I got into a very nice groove of school, homework, lab, sleep, repeat throughout the build season.

Some numbers to go along with this (Lab times courtesy of our sign-in system, which is in the cloud):