It's tough. I didn't realize how much I missed it until I went to kickoff the year after I graduated, and realized "I'm not going to be competing in the game, I'm never going to build an 1189 robot again. Never going to tell another judge our team history, never going to sweep the pit clean, never going to have to scramble to change the battery on the way to a match ever again."
Since I don't have time in college to mentor, the way I coped with it was by volunteering - which is something that I started doing my senior year in high school. Still not building robots, but it's still exciting to watch the students have the same experiences that I did in high school. I've made a lot of great friends though volunteering, so when I'm at a competition I'm still going back to a family of sorts.
My younger brother is still on the team, so I still go back when I'm home to see how they're doing and help out if I can (I actually walked in to the shop last year during an unbag period and the first thing I said was "your bumpers are illegal"). I may not be able to help them directly any more, but I'll always be proud to wear those numbers. I still wear my bandanna on my wrist when at competitions, still wear my "gearrings", and still wear my gear necklace as a reminder of how much of an influence the team had on my life.
Quote:
Originally Posted by PayneTrain
EDIT: I would also like to add that just because some students cycle out and cycle in, the best students recognize that the success and sustainability of the team is far more important than the sum of their contributions. My class did a lot of work that isn't going to pay dividends until a year or two from now, and this year's class did the same. The number we wore and the mission that drove us means so much more to us than the trophies we won (but finalists and Innovation in Control winners was pretty cool)
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Amen to that. There are a lot of things that I can look back on and say "I contributed to that", even though the benefits didn't start coming through until this year. My class went through a pretty rough phase of the team, with robots that didn't quite work,
constant mentor and teacher transitions for various reasons (4 teachers in 4 years), changing workspaces, and handling the largest influx of rookies/largest team we had ever had up until that point. And things are definitely looking up for the team now that everything is a lot more stable. I loved my time on the team despite the stress, but it's a great feeling knowing that others are now having even better experiences.
Among other more important things, I'm still overjoyed when I go back to the shop and see my handwriting on the labels of the battery cart...