[Jorge Ayala]

I have been three years in FRC and at the beginning I had the same problem with mentors provinding "excesive" help. In my first season our mentors didn't even know what was FIRST about so they only guided us, they didn't help us to build, the only thing they did is that they made an iron (yes, iron) arm to handle the tubes (my first season was in 2011, Logomotion). They made the robot just as we told them. Making an iron arm was just stupid, too much weight.

Then when we arrived at the Alamo regional the first thing we noticed was the Robowranglers (148) robot. We could not understand how an student-made robot was so great. Then we saw a lot of mentors of the team working with the robot and since that was not happening in our team we thought they were cheating. (Of course they were not, the thing is that we didn't know that it is OK to be helped by your mentors).

In that season I felt very inspired towards engineering because it was really challenging to built a robot without much significant help. I wanted to be just like team 148 (I really admire those guys). And our robot that season did horribly, I felt frustrated but the goal was achieved. I was inspired to be an engineer, I started appreciating sciences also.

In my second season, long story short, we recieved too much help from our mentors. Our mentors arrived early to our workshop (while we were in class) to continue working with our robot, when we arrived at our workshop the robot had some serious issues resolved and some team members were a little disappointed about that. However, that was not the end of it, in the competition everyone was very inspired because of our robot did well and we had the chance to appreciate the job that other teams had done . (Again, team 148 and 118)

This is my third season and now I know that mentors working along students have nothing wrong. That way students can learn from their mentors and mentors can learn from their students also. The thing is, you need to know that FIRST is about inspiring students towards engineering and sciences and this can only be done by cooperating between mentors and students. The balance between student and mentor work needs to be found by each team. Each teams needs to know what works for them.

You need to accept that a robot built 100% by students is not going to win against a robot built between students and mentors. Also the experience that an student get from working with its mentor is one of the best things of FIRST, mentors are there for a reason.

Work along with your mentors, you will not regret it. That is the meaning of FIRST and each team should work to find their way to accomplish it. It is all about inspiring people.