Quote:
Originally Posted by Jenn Feathers
was it easy for you to mentor other teams? is it possible to mentor more than one FRC team during the same season? or is that something i should not even think about?
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During college I don't recommend it at all. I did it out of several teams needing programming support. It was a source of stress and nearly resulted in me leaving FIRST. It also negatively impacted my grades (which is biting me in the butt when looking for graduate schools).
As for now, (I'm a full time engineer) I do think it is doable, I am an active mentor on 79 and available for consultation on numerous other teams across the country (via phone/email/IM/skype) because some of my good friends are part of the teams. I've also been trying to work with some of the rookie teams in my area to ensure that they have a running robot come competition. I also mentor an FTC team.
However, I have to caution against this level of involvement. I'm heavily involved because I am fortunate enough to have a very flexible job and no family in the area. Most of my friends in this area are heavily involved as well (I moved to Florida from Michigan about 8 months ago and am not terribly social outside of FRC). Basically the stars aligned and allowed me to be incredibly heavily involved this year. I have decided I need to scale back my involvement a little next year. I'm working on setting it up so it is easier to remotely mentor teams (79 is over an hour drive from my house) and I am hoping to spread the workload around to some of the other software engineering mentors on 79.
Look, I can't tell you not to mentor teams, it has helped me grow as a person and as an engineer. It is a great experience.