[EricH]

This one is for the OP, and it's something I've been remembering.

If you REALLY have time opening up, then by all means, try what you can do. But from experience, you probably won't actually have that time opening.

And here's my experience: Sailed through freshman year. Switched majors from undeclared to ME at end of year. Sophomore year, spring semester, I only passed 2 courses of 5. Yep, only passed 2. I failed 2 ME core courses, plus a math course. I ended up having to juggle my schedule a bit and take an extra year to graduate, along with taking a summer course. And I wasn't even mentoring an FRC team!

If you were to look at my schedule, it was something like 13-16 credits--not too terrible, considering 12 was a fulltime student and 18 was overload. But the ME core courses can be real killers--some say that they're designed as "weeder" courses, to filter out the ones who won't make it farther. (In my case, I retook all 3 failed courses, and passed 2 on the next attempt. 1 took a third try.)

If you have a "light" load, and it's major core courses, I strongly encourage you NOT to mentor unless you KNOW that you KNOW that you KNOW you can do it without failing the classes. Your 5th year and beyond isn't exactly going to be fun on the wallet.