[Jon Stratis]

I've always recommended one year off after graduating... College is an important step in a person's life, and you won't get the full experience if you're running back to high school every other day to build robots. That said, there's nothing wrong with visiting once in a while - college students show up to help at our summer camp and around kickoff all the time - they're home from school during those times anyways.

The biggest problem with going back to your own team to mentor is drawing that line between student and mentor. When you have a bunch of friends still on the team, it can make it very difficult to switch mindsets for everyone. Additionally, I have heard of incidents where a student comes back to mentor as a freshmen in college, and ends up romantically involved with a senior on the team - with only one year in age difference it may not seem like that big of a deal, but it crosses a rather serious line between mentor and student that can cause problems for the team and school administration.