Our FIRST Journey

FIRST is for Inclusion: Maithili Kumar - Section 6

Well, I put off writing this section as long as possible because to this day, it brings back a lot of...not so great emotions. But, I guess it's important for me to write it down because I learned a lot from the experiences. As you'll be able to tell very soon, my experiences during Ultimate Goal were vastly different from the other alumni in this book. While the others will probably say that Ultimate Goal was their favorite season, for me, it was the worst. So, let's get started, shall we?

Ah– the world of team dynamics. A very, very complex world that I still don't completely have figured out and probably never will. There are hundreds of thousands of books on team dynamics and leadership, but I'll just share my experiences because maybe it will resonate with someone who reads this.

It's hard to find a place to start on this topic. By the beginning of my junior year, our team had shifted into being a very competitive team requiring each team member to work hours everyday. This shift was the first major cause of issues I faced for a reason that I didn't realize until 6 months later: we had different goals. While many other team members were intent on getting to Worlds (as I'm sure you will be able to tell from reading the other alumni's perspectives), I honestly didn't care that much. School was my number one priority and I didn't feel the same desire to win and advance, especially if it required that I had to lose sleep and sacrifice on my other activities.

This key difference in our goals led to strongly opposing stances on how the team should be run, what time commitment should be expected, and more. For instance, when trying to get the best chance to win at a competition, a team may need to sacrifice on training new recruits, because new recruits will require extra time and practice before they produce competition level ideas. Furthermore, the time that was expected of each member was vastly different based on the goal. (My dad always tells me that I have to work according to what my end goal is. If your goal is to have a 4.0 GPA, then you may have to work harder than if your goal was a 3.5 GPA. Both goals are valid and acceptable, you just can't expect to work less and achieve a different result). Something else that definitely did not help was the fact that I wasn't able to go in person due to the pandemic. While I went once or twice in the beginning of the season, I couldn't justify going out to do robotics while others were quarantining and doing their part to prevent COVID-19 from spreading. On top of that, I needed to look out for my parents and others who I knew I would be in contact with.

Being online created a huge gap between me and the people in person. For one, FTC just wasn't fun for me. The thing is, Ayush, Rahul, and Vishwa are best friends. I didn't have anyone I was very close with on the team. For me, everyone was "just a teammate" or a "somewhat friend" whereas they were basically family. Watching members in person goofing off and reducing meeting efficiency while I was stuck staring at an online screen for 14+ hours a day didn't make me feel good about the time I was spending for FTC. Since only a single member CADded and I thought I didn't have enough experience to make critiques, it felt like I was wasting time: neither contributing to FTC nor being able to do schoolwork.

It didn't help that we had a lot of debates about everything from what theme for a slides presentation to overarching goals for our robot. In particular, I remember team meetings being especially lengthy. We would start at 10 AM, hoping to finish in an hour. But pretty soon, debates would occur so that the team meeting would last longer and longer, past lunch to 1 PM or more.

Why did I stick around, you might ask? There were definitely many many times when I wanted to just give up and quit. But, I still loved robotics. I enjoyed designing and making mechanisms and doing outreach. When we were playing Avalon (board game) or making jokes after a meeting ended, I had a lot of fun and enjoyed spending time with my teammates.