[dtengineering]

Almost every FRC student who graduated from our team and enrolled at a local university expressed a desire to return and mentor the team the following year.

Not one of them did. And, frankly, that is a good thing.

They really wanted to, and they really meant to... but their lives changed. Their lives changed because university is different from high school. They had less free time... in addition to more demanding courses, they had to commute to class. The commuting alone sucked up an hour a day from their free time, and the homework and studying likely a few more.

They had new friends, and those friends led them to new hobbies and activities. Many had jobs to help cover the cost of tuition, or volunteered with organizations on campus. They were doing new things and learning new things... exactly what you are supposed to do at university.

The idea of hanging out in the shop until nine or ten at night every night for six weeks simply became unrealistic.

That's why university projects tend to evolve over several years. Students can get involved as first year students, learn what is involved, and then gradually take on leadership positions over the course of their studies. To a high school student, used to a new challenge every year, that might seem a slow pace... but time moves more rapidly as you age. When you are fifteen a year is almost 7% of your life... but at 25 it is only 4% of your life. And it does seem to go by twice as fast!

I've seen this play out in a few different venues... we've had some excellent high school VEX teams in BC carry on as VEX U teams. I admire their dedication, but having a casual chat with one of the team members and looking at their robot I had to comment, "You don't have as much free time as you did in high school, eh?" He had to agree, "We haven't had as much time to work on the robot as we would have liked."

This past summer I took a BCIT team to the MATE ROV competition. In MATE, successful high school teams can move up and compete in the college category. (I think there is a film about that somewhere...) As a high school teacher I was really impressed that a high school could keep up with university teams... but now that I've worked with the college teams I learned that I pretty much had it backwards. Most of the high school students essentially have infinite time and support relative to the college teams... it was summed up most adequately when one of my students was approached by one of the parents there to support a very successful high school team, "So what team is your kid on?" the parent asked.

"My son is at home with his mother." explained my student. "I'm here to compete."

To a high school student, a college division of FRC makes sense. And that's a good thing. But looking back, and taking in the perspective of teaching both high school and post-secondary, the worlds are quite different. Treasure your time in high school, and treasure your FRC experience... but embrace new experiences when they present themselves.

When the time comes to be an FRC mentor, you'll be that much better at it for having a wide range of experiences to bring to the table.

Jason