Chief Delphi - Mentoring as a College Freshman

Let me start by saying there is no `correct' answer to this question. FIRST is a huge time commitment, but it can be equally rewarding. Here's my story as further anecdotal evidence to guide your decision.

After I graduated high school, I had no explicit intention to mentor a team. In fact, there wasn't a team near the University of Illinois at the time. In my first few weeks at college, I was starting to get involved in a collegiate team, and this is when things started moving quickly. A junior in the club had been working on starting an FRC team for a couple years and he was looking for interested people to mentor. At the same time, a local engineer was looking to start an FTC team (which I had no experience with). Since the collegiate team did nothing in the fall, I signed up as a mentor for the FTC team. It was great, but a huge time commitment. My school workload was manageable, so it wasn't too bad, but it did force me to manage my time more than the average freshman.

Near the end of the FTC season, I was asked to join in on forming the FRC team. I didn't really give it much thought before I said `yes'. My second semester had more coursework and more robotics, so it was quite an ordeal. It was also a great time. I became good friends with my fellow collegiate mentors (there were 4 of us that year - 2 freshmen, 1 junior, 1 grad student) and remained involved in the collegiate team in an administrative role.

In the two years since, the FTC team has disbanded in order to allow the students to focus more on FRC off season outreach and training instead of another competition. This has also given mentors more of a break in the fall. I've started intentionally overloading my fall schedule to allow for a light schedule during build season, but even doing this doesn't solve everything. I'm confident that my involvement in FRC has caused me to pull more all-nighters than many of my colleagues, and I've had to do some careful scheduling in group projects so I contribute my fair share.

That said, if I were to do this all over again, I would mentor FRC as a college student. The experience has been exceptionally rewarding (plus I have tons of experiences that sound great on behavioral interviews) and I've met some awesome people. It's tough, but it can be done. Determine what your priorities are, what your schedule will be, then make a decision. I've been able to maintain a GPA over 3.5 in computer engineering while mentoring, but everyone's different.

Best of luck in your future endeavors. You'll have your entire career to give back even if you aren't able to mentor in college.