Quote:
Originally Posted by jason701802
The teams that have the best performing robots are not necessarily the ones that do the most inspiration. Some of the most inspired (not excited) kids I have talked to are the ones that are on predominately student teams.
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I have had a completely different experience than you then. I have been most inspired to pursue engineering and perform at a higher level by the most dominant teams in FIRST, not by the teams who struggle to put a robot on the field.
There are different types of inspiration. A team who dominates and leaves you in the dust drives you and inspires you to reach greatness. A team who succeeds in achieving their goals with what little help they have inspires you do be humble and give help and advice where it is needed.
I have been a student on a decently well known team for 4 years (Team 11) and now mentor a rookie team that I co founded (3929). We have around 30 students and around 14-16 constantly active mentors. We have two bots. We have worked our butts off (students AND mentors) in hopes of reaching the level of our strongest opponents. Attempting anything else than greatness is in my opinion, mediocre.
If I was supposed to sit on the sidelines and give tidbits of advice as a "mentor" then I probably would not be mentoring an FRC team. Working alongside my students (they're mostly only 4 years younger than me) is the most amazing joy I have ever felt. When students are able to learn from me and accomplish something without me, that is a great feeling. But that cannot be achieved if I sit on the sidelines. We run our team the way we see fit. So far, our students have no complaints (trust me, we ask them at the end of each week if they would like to change something about the way we are doing things). If they didn't like our level of involvement, which I am not afraid to say is quite a bit, why would they still keep coming back and in larger numbers? Why would they volunteer to stay later at meetings to work with us to finish sub-assemblies of the robot? The relationship we have with our students is the most powerful tool of inspiration, and I believe that that relationship is unattainable by just sitting on the sidelines.
@nilesh
The real question is: why do you care? How does this affect you? Are the other teams taking something away from you? Or are you just very ignorant and jealous of others' success?