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->HairyDiode
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-Leaving ORION 2-9-2018
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-I'm stepping down as vice president of ORION, below is my reasoning for leaving.
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-- - - - - - - - - - - - ---=[Why I'm Leaving ORION]=--- - - - - - - - - - - - -
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--Preface:
-
- To start off, I'd like to say that I don't think there's anything
-objectively wrong with ORION, and that I'm leaving mostly because it wasn't what
-I expected it to be. I wish the remaining members of ORION good luck on their
-mission.
-
--The Mandelbots:
-
- ORION was founded initally as a way for us to get funding for our
-robotics team, The Mandelbots. This was the reason I joined ORION, but after the
-last competition season I feel that that's no longer the case. ORION has moved
-on to different goals, and I feel has distracted us from robotics.
- Despite efforts by all of us to avoid them, we ran into the same issues
-of bad time management that we did last year. In order to fund our team we had
-to apply for grants through ORION, most of which only came in close to our
-qualifier date. As a result the parts that we needed to build our robot came in
-3 days before the qualifier, giving us only 3 days to build. However, the
-late-coming grants don't explain why for the months before that, little or no
-progress was made on the aspects of robotics that weren't so dependent on new
-parts. For example, coding started only about a week before the competition, and
-very few prototypes were built with the parts that we had from last season.
- During those months without parts, we spent most of our meetings working
-on other things. I admit, I too am guilty of this, but the one thing that has
-taken up the most time in our robotics meetings was ORION. The thing with ORION
-work is that the tasks it involves like applying for grants and planning for
-future projects are all official business related to robotics, but nonetheless
-are not robotics. So in my opinion they merely presented us with a more
-acceptable way to procrastinate on the robot. We even had members of the team
-who spent almost every meeting working on ORION projects that had nothing to do
-with robotics.
- There's nothing inherently wrong with focusing on ORION with our time,
-but it's not what I signed up for and it's not why I agreed to host our robotics
-meetings.
-
--The Future of ORION:
-
- "ORION is a stem nonprofit ..." is how we would always introduce
-ourselves while doing outreach, but it doesn't say much about our goals and how
-we aim to acheive them. What ORION currently has in the works is a python class
-and a potential robotics camp in Ghana. Personally, I disagree with these
-projects, but this is in no way some sort of indictment.
- For one, a single member of ORION has been the only one working on the
-python class, and has requested that they be the only one to teach it. In the
-months they have been working on the curriculum they have never even shown it to
-other members of ORION, as far as I am aware of. There's nothing objectively bad
-about this but I personally feel that given the python class is one of our main
-focuses, there should be more collaboration involving all of us.
- Ghana on the otherhand, I disagree with on the basis that it's too
-misdirected. Why is it that we are running these camps in far off places with a
-vaguely humanitarian goal? Shouldn't we focus on our own communities, and don't
-they deserve to be taught by people from their own communities? The implication
-has always been that because of economic reasons those communities can not set
-up camps of their own, but if this is true then there are deeper issues to be
-solved. To do things like set up a camp for them is like giving a band-aid to
-someone who's just lost an arm.
-
--Conclusion:
-
- It is because of all this that i'd like to leave ORION and will no
-longer mention my previous association elsewhere. I wish the rest of ORION the
-best of luck. This document will be hosted on my personal site, and any current
-members of ORION are welcome to have any comments they have be hosted alongside
-it if they email them to me at 1339802534.kk@gmail.com.
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