time management 101 and the consequences of not managing time

Ok, now this all started two weeks into this semester. i was telling a mate of mine about how i had done motor control involving servos and stepper motors back in 7th and 6th form using microcontrollers. thats when this whole episode started. he asked me if i was willing to help him out with robodemo. my first reaction was HELL YEA!!! why wouldnt i?? i had always wanted to do this.... so i said yea sure... i would love to.... and then just out of interest, i asked him, when is the comp?? he said 2 weeks....... 2 WEEKS!!! to build a robot and win a compitition. thats impossible..... so since then, i have tried my best to get it to work.... but in the end, we just didnt have enough time, our robot was too heavy, the base was too flimsy and the wheels were too small.... so when we put the 2.5 KG lead acid batterry on the base, it just went concave on us and since the wheels werent big enough and neither did they have enough grip, all we got was constant wheels spin. now when you have such major problems 15 mins before compitition, you have no choice but to pull out. but hey, thats life.... you cant do anything about it at that point of time but pull out.... so thats what we did.... we knew about an hour before comp that we cant make it.... but we still tried.... tried till almost the last minute.... they say never give up even when all hope seems lost. but sometimes, its stupid to continue knowing full well you cant make it..... you cant do anything about it.... so you have to give up.... so we still went to the comp... to see what the other teams came up with.... and yea.... i learned a few lessons.... speed and weaponry is not all that is needed to win.... all you need to win is speed control and nose design.... so with valuable lessons learned, we start preparing for next year's competition and hopefully, we do better next time around.