[techhelpbb]

Between my jobs and FIRST I have crossed the burnout mark more than I can count. It is not unusual for me to pull a 90-100 hour week and that can happen easily even without FIRST.

A couple of things:

1. There are many ways to help people without locking yourself into a deadline FIRST openly admits is always too short for a job too big.
2. In the end you are contributing to the schools skills and opportunities they ought to have solved for themselves with all those fantastic property taxes which basically get funneled to them.
3. Harming yourself robs FIRST in the end because this project takes every sort of resource you can offer: time, money and good will. What you do not have today you may have tomorrow.

I walked away with an associates degree from college. Now I make way more money than I want to talk about and little of it is in my degree scope. The priority is to balance your needs and those of the people you help.

This may mean you find and train other people to help you mentor these teams to free you up to finish school or increase your earnings to protect your well being with the goal of giving back more later.

Whatever you choose to do it should not be about 'what can you do for me today' it should be about 'what did you do for me when I needed it'. FIRST is bottomless the more we do the more there is to be done. That said FIRST is not unique in being bottomless it is just the lot we all threw in with. A good cause but please find balance.