[EricVanWyk]

There are some individuals that successfully mentor the team they were on as a student, but I've seen it fail much more often.

The issue is that you have to make the distinction between first-year mentor and 5th-year senior. They are wildly different roles: You aren't there to make a robot, you are there to help the students. This transition is always difficult. Staying with the same team makes it even more difficult, as everyone still sees you in your old position. Again, some individuals are mature enough to overcome this, but they are a very small minority.

Your first year as a mentor is like your first year as a student. You are suddenly thrust into a situation that requires new skills and new viewpoints, and it is frankly overwhelming to watch the seniors navigate the list of responsibilities. Experience as a student helps, but the skills learned as a student are a small subset of the skills to be learned as a mentor. I knew how to tune PID loops, but it took me 8 years to learn how to guide a brilliant but shy student into someone who can tune a PID loop under a competition stress environment.



I mentored a team as a freshman, and in retrospect I personally wasn't prepared for it. I could handle the engineering just fine. What I couldn't handle was the classroom management, the student growth management, the lesson planning and adaptation.

I was fortunate to get my butt kicked at Olin. My professors were very talented in finding the things I needed to improve and bringing a harsh spotlight onto my flaws. They were some very hard lessons, but I couldn't be an effective mentor without them.


TL;DR: Wait a year or two and then join a team with an experienced mentor group. Its a heck of a trip.