Hello once again Vex Forum!
As we all know, the competition season for VEX starts in the month of May, when the school year is wrapping up. Looking ahead as a senior, I was wondering how this affects joining VEXU team, since college freshmen will start after half of the competitive season has gone by and teams have already been established in VEXU by that point.
Thank you for your time and apologies if this ends up being a repeat! (I didn’t find anything similar in the search bar)
That probably depends on which team you join. and what aspect of VEX you are interested in. As for BLRS, we start doing a lot of designing in the summer before freshmen join the club. Once freshmen are able to join (usually the second week of classes), they start out as recruits. They will come to a couple of general meetings for more information about club structure and the different subteams (building, programming, notebook, etc), and as they stick around and are actively helping in some way they will become an official member after about a month. Generally, we try to make sure that freshmen are teamed up with or at least have some assistance from veterans of the club. VEXU and VRC are similar in many aspects, but are drastically different in others (such as custom parts and sensors).
As you probably know, bot designs change drastically throughout the season, so don’t be concerned that you may be “behind” on the team. I’m sure I can speak for every VEXU team that we are welcome to new ideas and suggestions no matter how absurd they are. If you come in wanting to work on robots and learn, everyone will be welcome to have you.
On the MCCC U-team, most of the summer and fall semester is spent in planning, and building anything doesn’t really start in earnest until Christmas break, when the team members have some time to work. The biggest difference I see between HS teams and U teams is that the U-teams don’t have much time to get together for work on the bot…often just a few hours each Saturday, while HS teams can often work every day. Much of the planning and discussion takes place online.
Thank you for your responses! I’ll be sure to keep these things in mind : )
At WPI, we are doing things a bit different this year than other years. We took an earlier start this year, with several dedicated returning members starting to design a bot over the summer. Since the school year has started, myself and a few other freshmen have started the second bot, as we are confident in our skills from VRC, as we have many worlds awards + appearances between us. New members, this includes new freshmen and other years go to a weekly weekend meeting for a few hours at a time to get caught up to what’s going on with the bots (we still make sure that there are relevant discord discussions so they are always updated), as well as they are making their own bot to learn the ways of vex, with guidance from knowledgeable members.