So I recently graduated from high school, and I still feel a strong draw to work with my high school team, especially when it comes to driving. I graduated early, and thus, by age limits, I could still be involved in robotics for two more years… But by education standards, I am no longer eligible.
Is anyone else facing this problem? Namely, graduating early, and thus having your robotics experience cut short?
Also, if you know anything about this, is there some way that a high school graduate who is still high-school aged, is there some way that they can still drive the robot?
While I haven’t had any experience with this issue, I did check the rules for some definitions.
From the Vex Manuel:
Student – Anyone enrolled in a pre-college school or home-schooled as part of a pre-college educational curriculum.
Driver - A* student* team member responsible for operating and controlling the Robot. Only two (2) of these are allowed per team on the field at any given time.
Therefore I would say that if someone has graduated from high school then he is not allowed to drive the robot because he is not enrolled in a pre-college program. However, this is just my opinion. Does anyone else interpret this a different way?
Yes I believe he knows that the rules state that he would not be allowed to drive, but I think he is proposing a rule change or something of the sort, because of the issue he brought up.
Jordan, you read my mind… I am proposing a rule change, for the following reasons:
Creating a college team is hard, especially while trying to still help with a major high-school team.
As a community college student, it is virtually impossible to get enough interest, let alone funding (for two teams…), find time and a place to meet, throw in less competitions, bigger schools, and a whole bunch more…
The level of playing. I’ve already got a high-school team that has consistently done pretty well, so why would i split my loyalties, attend two sets of competitions, memorize two different versions of the rules, and so much more.
and 4) It would mean (hopefully) that my attentions and time would be split between two, three, and maybe even four teams at Worlds!
My basic reasoning is VEX is losing their advanced students by this limitation. High-school competition is easy to get into, and yet college is a lot more involved, difficult and time-consuming.
I would propose a more age-based AND grade-based limitations, like FIRST has, which allows advanced students, as well as those lagging to participate.
In response to everyone else, yes, I am basically just trying to find a way that I can drive… I love holomonic controls, and I have yet to fully use one in competition…
SO, that being said, I welcome all questions, comments, and suggestions.
One last question: Is anyone else having this same problem? Do you know of anyone who is having this problem?
Since you’re a community college student, wouldn’t the high school team understand if you switched to the college level? Since that is the appropriate age group, I would tend to think they would understand the switch and that this wouldn’t be a switching of loyalties. This would be a time appropriate transition because of your educational status.
2)From past experiences I’ve had, I’ve found that the hardest transition for a graduated student to make is the transition from a student mindset to a mentor mindset. Could it be that you’re having trouble making this transition?
Now is the wrong time for a rule change that changes the definition of a student participant. If someone else is in the same circumstance of transitioning from student to mentor and suddenly a rule changes to allow him to be a student again, then that could cause some very conflicting actions.
Is there a better way to help your team? Is trying to change the rules to allow you to drive truly going to help the team in the long run? From the experiences I had in high school, I always found an abundance of drivers on every team I was on. Not everyone wanted to put in the long hours to design, program, or build the robot necessaries to compete, but everyone was always willing to go out on the competition floor and drive.
These are just my thoughts. I would oppose what could be a drastic change to the rules at this point in the season, because it could heavily effect some team dynamics.
Is the ability to drive the only reason you would like to see a rule change?
I think it would be a pretty bad rule change, honestly.
The only thing you can’t do on your current team is drive. Sure, you went to college early so you’re younger than most college students, and that sucks for you since you want to drive. But the “harm” created by modifying the rule to allow college students to drive is a bit much in my opinion. How will Vex look good and engaging to the public if they see a bunch of adults driving robots in a “high school robotics competition”? Imagine all of the in team fights as high schoolers going to college want to keep their driver spot because the rules say they can, even though VRC is a high school competition? It’s just a bad road to go down.
I wish they had a smaller college level competition for people who want to only semi-seriously play with robots rather than build two full competition robots. I’d love to play Round Up for fun some weekend but I cant get a huge team together.
If I had the means to set up and run a Vex event, I totally would, but if I had the means and the interest to do that I’d probably have just as much means and interest for a VRC team.
I don’t really see any harm in defining student as:
“Student - Anyone under 18 not on a college team, or someone enrolled in a pre-college school or home-schooled as part of a pre-college educational curriculum.”
(Proposed change in bold)
This allows early graduates to compete until they are 18, or someone who is lagging to continue competing until they graduate.
This captures exactly what I was trying to say! You won’t have college-
aged kids (or adults) driving, and then again, you won’t be limiting anything else…
