Re: Mentors
 

To add to Andy's comment. I graduated in May from the University of Maryland at College Park with my degree in Electrical Engineering. I got hired by someone (THANKS CHIP!) who was impressed with my work with a FIRST team as an E-mentor. I wasn't expecting him to offer me a job, but I'm sure glad he did! Of all the jobs I was looking at, this is the most technically challenging job that was available.

Mentors provide a great deal more than the tools and knowledge of building a robot. Transferable Skills like networking, teamwork, project management, and problem solving are just a few. Competitions are also a great place to practice these skills with mentors there to help and teach. I wouldn't be where I am without a number of very good mentors while in high school and then having them teach me how to mentor while in college.

Sorry this is slightly off topic, but this is what I personally feel are the real benefits of having mentors. There are many competitive student-created bots out there. I feel that mentors really bring the transferable skills to the table. Those are the skills that no matter what kind of job, relationships or anything else will help you through your life.

Happy New Year!

Steve

Re: Mentors
 

Somehow your team has gotten the (mistaken) impression that FIRST is some sort of contest to see who can build the best robot

its not

its a program intended to inspire students to pursue careers in engineering and science, by given them the opportunity to work with professionals for six weeks

and to see FIRST-hand how cool these careers are.

So... if your team thinks they dont NEED any mentors

uhmm....

whats wrong with this picture?!

if all they want to do is build a robot, I recommend you form a BattleBots team instead. :^)

Re: Mentors
 

once again i would like to thank everyone for their replies ...

i think that my team does not know what they are getting themselves into .. i know that some of them are in it just to build the robot and not for the overall experience, and i am hoping that kickoff will change that ... but i do not want a Battlebots team because i am in it for the experience and not the robot ...

kpugh: some of my team members have been to workshops on certain things like pneumatics and drive trains and so on ... but they still do not think that we need mentors ...

Andy B.: i want to apologize on behalf of Dmitri i do not think he meant to insult anyone with what he said ....

i dont want my team to "waste" a year because we do not have mentors ..

once again thanks everyone for their suggestions

--shyra

Re: Mentors
 

If you find me at the CR kick-off I would be willing to meet a few of your team members for a few minutes of Q&A or info sharing. If you think seeing a robot up close would be good I could see about bringing ours to the kick-off. Let me know.

Re: Mentors
 

I agree. I'm sorry I never intended to insult anyone if I did.

Re: Mentors
 

I would replace the 'and' in that statment with 'to'

FIRST only has one purpose, not two. the knowledge we are increasing is knowledge of what a technology based career is like.

We are not teaching anyone to be mini engineers - FIRST connects the math and science you have learned in HS with the applications that it can be used for

I will tell you a secret. The technology we use on the FIRST team is scraping edge - that box of junk they give you at the kickoff, compared to what is available for commercial and military engineering projects, NONE of it would be usable - you would never see a probe landing on Mars with drill motors or Victor speed controllers

(not to take away anything from what Innovation FIRST has done - the equipement we get is excellent for educational purposes - but NASA would laugh at you if you proposed to use it on their projects)

The amount of money we spend on FIRST robots wouldnt fund any of the projects I have worked on for even one week.

FIRST is here to give students a taste of engineering and science, like the retired lady at the supermarket passing out 3 grams of cheese on a cracker

FIRST is not here to feed you, or to teach you - its here to make you hungry for more :c)

or from another perspective - FIRST is like we have traveled to the future, and we dont like what we saw when we got there. So we came back and now we are attempting to alter the future

alter YOUR future!

FIRST is a journey (or in the language of the '60's, FIRST is a trip man!) We are on an adventure traveling into the future together, changing it as we go along, one day at time.

Re: Mentors
 

Heh. You said it!! Last year was our teams rookie year and our team had no mentors. We were more or less a student run team. We were fortunate in that each of us was strong in some area or another and we more or less had no trouble with the technical side of things, but we were totally lost. We were lost not because of a lack of technical knowledge(not to say there isn't a lot we could have learned), but rather because of a loss of management knowledge. None of us had ever overseen or managed anything, and we were clueless in this area.

Re: Mentors
 

Jeez Ken,
All you need to do is shout "Change the Culture!" at me, and throw in some flashy lights/text, and I'd believe I was watching a Chairman's propaganda video... ;)

John

Re: Mentors
 

Management Knowledge is the most important thing a mentor can help your team with. Management of an engineering project is not something that a high school student would generally have had experience with. After all, the most common equivalent project that comes close, that a high school student might have done is an Eagle Scout project (or the Girl Scout equivalent), and not all of those. So, since high schoolers in general have not had experience in managing projects, how could they expect to be any good at it? Especially when they are competing against pros who do it every day?

Even most teachers, who understand classroom management, do not understand engineering project management. But Project Management is one of the keys to a successful robot.

So yes you do need help, but Keith is right when he says that the team needs to figure that out for themselves. Unfortunately, some lessons are best learned through hard experience. One of the best lessons I ever learned was spending a day digging a ditch. But it came with lots of blisters! Don't be discouraged if your team winds up "wasting" a year. If they figure out what they did wrong by not accepting help when they needed it, then at least they will have learned something, and it may be a far more valuable lesson than anything a mentor would have taught them about building a robot!

Re: Mentors
 

Actually, I think you are comparing apples to oranges. The equipment that we receive is just designed for hobby use and it is pretty high tech in that regard.

Re: Mentors
 

thanks everyone for replying .. and thank you Andy Grady for the autonomous idea ... it worked and it convinced my team that we do need programming mentors which at least is a start ...

i know that we also need mentors to help with the organizational side of things .. i am currently the main one running things as that was the deal that was agreed upon so that we could have a team in the first place .. however i do not know who to ask or where to look for someone who could help me manage the team ...

please can we try to keep this thread on topic because my team really does need the help ?? thank you ...

thank you everyone once again

--shyra

Re: Mentors
 

I believe you can find a list on the FIRST website of teams in your area that are willing to mentor rookie teams - that sometimes includes lending engineers to new teams and also sharing resources.

Re: Mentors
 

Umm, I have a question, do you guys plan to go to Nats or any far away regionals because not only can mentors help with the robot and guiding the build season, but companys and buissnesses would respect an adults word more than a teenager from highschool. This could be just another factor you can point out. Unless everyone is willing to pay for their own ticket and regiristration, and hotel, ur gonna need sponsors.

Re: Mentors
 

nats is a dream for us .. but realistically it probably wont happen this year ... we are lucky enough to be only 15 minutes away approximately from the arena where the Canadian Regional is being held so we don't have to worry about hotels and plane tickets for that .. and yes businesses and companies do respect an adults word over a teenagers, but the stipulation for the team was that it would be student-run, however during phone calls, i do make sure the company knows that they can speak to our principal to make sure that we are actually a team

Re: Mentors
 

Can you clearly define for me what you mean by "student-run"?

From everything I have read, the students are running around with no "adults" other than yourself. This is, in my opinion, similar to letting the lunatics run the asylum simply because students have not necessarily learned many of the skills that are needed to effectively run the team on their own.

I also believe, that it is this definition of "student-run" that has led to the students on your team thinking that they do not need any mentors. It could have been the mere "implication" that planted the seeds within the students minds. However, in order to know if this is even a possiblity, it is necessary to know the definition of "student-run".

indieFan