Re: which is better as a student or mentor....
 

I think that the feeling of joy you get after winning an award is based not on your position on the team, but rather the number of hours and the amount of passion you put into the 'bot. The more effort you put in the better you feel about it being validated, which does lean it towards students because they get the chance to do the work, while mentors just help. But in the end, if you work hard, no matter what part of the team you are, it will feel great.

Re: which is better as a student or mentor....
 

haha..that's what we said last year and what we said this year. We will get it though.

Re: which is better as a student or mentor....
 

This topic is great for me, since I'm a senior too.

What everyone said is right, and I'll repeat it.

As a student, you enjoy the success of the team by knowning that you've accomplished this and that in order to help the rest of the team win the award/the competition.

As a driver at my first year in FIRST, reaching as high as the Semi-Finals, I felt very satisfied with what me and my team have accomplished.

The feeling that you have as a student is uniqe and is only 3 times in a life time (for FRC, being from Sophomores to Seniors).

Now that I think of it retrospectivly, in 2008 I was the driver again, and once again our team had failed in the Semi-Finals, but this time I wasn't happy at all. I actually cried.
And I might say that I had a reason to cry, since in my team the project is mendatory for 2 years and the third year as a Senior is voluntary and is counted more or less as young mentoring. And indeed I had cried since I understood that I wouldn't have much to have to do on the robot for the next season, to say that it was THAT significant to the team's victory.

The past two years in our team weren't the most successful and only this year we had a great team of siriously dedicated students and mentors, and that is probably one of the reasons why we had a good robot and strategy for the Israeli regional and have won it, and I'm not sure I can say that this year's success has a big part of it because of me, for several reasons.

My first goal in joining FIRST was to practice working in a business-like group, as a programmer, trying to build a prototype in a short time, in team work, and I believe that teamwork was very hard to be done in the past two years. I am not sure I have entierly been able to succeed in working in team work for the past three years for several reasons.

But I understood that I and any other Senior graduating HS should understand that life moves on. We had FIRST to learn our lessons for the future, for the exact things that we are about to come in to really soon.
That is why we should try to accomplish those goals we haven't entirly been able to succeed in FIRST, or haven't felt satisfied with the results. Find a good job with co-workers you find that you can work with, in team work and cooperation. Find the right way that works for you and your company to work to accomplish the companies goals, like in FIRST where you'd try to find the right goals that would fit your school, your sponsors, your parents and yourselves, the students. Work hard to have your company beat the rest of the competition in the market, just like you'd work hard to have your robot be better than other teams.

Continuing as a mentor probably has a slight diffrence from being a student, but not too much. I think that any senior should keep being active in FIRST as a mentor, since you keep learning more lessons from what the team does and how the team has done to accomplish what you've told them to do, to see if you were right.

Like I've said before, life moves on, and so should you. You've tried your best, but not always what you want actually happens. But you should at least feel good with yourself that you've tried your best to accomplish as much as possible while you were a student.

I know that I, as a programming team leader, a team CEO, a strategy team leader, a driver, a coach and an FLL mentor, have accomplished atleast the minmum of all I needed to have from FIRST.

Winning the regional, and having the chance to be in Atlanta, to compete and meeting the other famous teams is just a bonus. Though a rewarding one. I'm really for the idea that every FIRST team should have thier opportunity to experience the exictment going on in the crowd when the Einstien games begin.

If missing the field is the problem for you, don't forget that mentors can be commanders/coaches. :cool:


Yet I might be wrong.

Re: which is better as a student or mentor....
 

Being a student is definitely more fun.

I was a student on Team Voltage for four years, and now I'm back as a mentor. Voltage has a program called "Mentors-in-training" and that's basically created for college students that want to mentor. We do this because the team wants to be able to monitor college student's grades to ensure they're not slipping or become overly dedicated. I'm one such person...

anyways...

The whole experience has made me a 100% better person and totally changed me (as cliche as that may sound). When I started FIRST I wasn't a good student, I wasn't motivated, and I knew what I wanted to do but didn't know anything about how to achieve the goals.

All of that is great but there's still one experience that was the culmination of it all...

When I was a student we won our first ever Championship award for controls in 2007; I was one of the people that got to sit in the awards section to go get it. I will never ever forget when the CEO of Rockwell Automation said "This team makes control look easy..." One of the reasons we got the award (not undercutting the team, EVERYONE has a hand in our robots) was because of our amazing software that had an awesome autonomous that could react no matter what the orientation of the rack and it made control for the drivers really easy (hence the easy button that would score automatically). I was the only person on the software team that year; the mentor that taught me and I are now good friends, the whole experience was just AWESOME.

You don't get those experiences as a mentor, however, you DO get to help the students that are younger than you build the pieces to have those experiences. It's very rewarding but in a different way.

--Chris Struttmann
Voltage386 (Charge UP!)