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Unread 24-02-2012, 12:18
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wireties wireties is offline
Principal Engineer
AKA: Keith Buchanan
FRC #1296 (Full Metal Jackets)
Team Role: Mentor
 
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Re: Mentors on the team

Quote:
Originally Posted by johnmaguire2013 View Post
I'm sure they do, but not if they can help it. They try to exhaust all other possibilities first.
My company has a "2 hour rule" - if you spend more than 2 hours working on the same problem w/o progress you must take a break, consult a colleague, do something different to break the impasse. This is good advice on a robotics team with only 6 weeks to build the robot.

It is frustrating, unproductive and a poor learning experience to "exhaust all possibilities" before consulting a mentor. Most people learn using 2 of these 3 methods: reading, hearing, seeing/doing/experiencing. It is a rare student (of any kind) who can simply read about building a robot and go do it. Mentors can tell a student how to perform a task (thus the student hears it) or show them how to perform a task (thus the student sees it). Mentors make impossible tasks (for a typical isolated high school student) possible withing a 6-week window.
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