Your thread really resonated with me.
As both a student and a mentor, I've had many moments where I felt that I have little to offer in this program. I've never worked outside of an engineering/R&D environment, and with an English degree it's easy to feel lost. FIRST teams often focus so much on engineering lessons that I feel the lessons that resonated most with me as a student - teamwork, communication, creative development, enjoying what you do - are sometimes lost or undermined in the face of a nearly impossible 6-week task. I've discussed at length with others who mentor but also are not engineers - my friend Rich Kressly and I have shared many conversations on this topic over the years. It's a nagging feeling that is present in every engineering conversation in which I obviously cannot hold my own. To put it very nicely, feeling that way inhales audibly and it undermines self-confidence. I continue to stick with these programs, and in advocating and supporting robotics education in general, for two reasons -
1 - because I was influenced by a group of mentors who had varying backgrounds but were all effective communicators, and showed me that the camaraderie and relationships that made us an excellent team were just as important as the engineering and design lessons being taught to us. It's easy to forget that we're dealing with impressionable teenagers sometimes, and that there are really basic life lessons (how to treat others, how to properly resolve conflict, how to be a great teammate, etc.) that can be reinforced alongside the engineering fundamentals that they are being taught. I have to remind myself - I can do that.
2 - because of two great student experiences I've had. After grilling students for 8 hours on their awards submission essay, making them agonize over word choice and sentence structure and watching them realize why effective communication is perhaps the most important asset they can develop in their lives, a student confided that I had pushed them harder than any teacher they'd had and that they were better for it. That same year, I received an anonymous thank you note from a student who simply thanked me for always treating him/her like an equal when they didn't always feel that way. And here, I didn't do much... I just tried to teach them what I felt had been really important for me to learn in my own life.
That note still sits on my desk at home because sometimes I need reminding, too. I can be there for those fringe kids who, like me, were potentially not interested in a STEM career but still got a lot from being on the team. These robotics programs can still teach these kids extremely valuable lessons and set them on a successful path in life, regardless if they become engineers, artists, sailboat captains, lion tamers, or whatever tickles their fancy. They just need to be encouraged that they can be a successful [anything]!
At my job I work hard to be the best at what I am doing, almost to a neurotic level. I despise being ignorant about the topic at hand (regardless of what that topic may be), and as a result I've worked to grasp basic engineering terms and concepts by asking many questions. So many questions. Probably too many questions. I have been lucky to work with many people who have patiently explained complicated concepts that are definitely outside of the range of an English degree. I think I've learned more about physics from Paul Copioli mid-meetings than I retained from all of high school. I still often get the 'why the heck am I here?' feeling, but working to develop the self-confidence to admit when I'm lost has really diminished that. And furthermore, the result is that I have become/try to become a more valuable employee over time.