[kristinweiss]

My advice as a college mentor is to take a semester or two off from FIRST and learn how to manage your time in college. It is ok to volunteer and attend kickoff and competitions, but take some time to get your college routine under control. After a semester or two, if, and only if you feel as if you can manage your time mentoring a team and maintain your academics, start introducing yourself back into FRC. Personally, I started doing this by only attending meetings once every other week and doing most of my mentoring remotely via skype and giving feedback on documents posted to our team drive. Once you have mastered balancing this type of commitment, you can consider becoming more active as a mentor. As a second year now, I meet with my team once or twice a week and communicate with them almost daily on things that can be worked on remotely. The one thing that you have to keep in mind though, is that school should always come first! It is ok to miss a meeting if you have a big exam to study for or need to catch up on homework.

With all this being said though, I think that college mentors can be some of the most valuable mentors a team can have. College FRC alumni know how to relate with the students on the team because they have been in their shoes, and also have the experience to guide a team to success. Another added bonus is that college students don't really know what sleep is, so they can be at the shop during the late build nights when all the adults want to go and sleep. I know personally, there have been several occasions when my kids needed an adult at the shop because none of the parents could come, and I was able to sit at the shop on my laptop working on schoolwork while they worked on the robot.

In summary, mentoring in college is incredibly rewarding but focus on yourself and getting adjusted to college before jumping back into FIRST. You probably will never be able to give the same time commitment you did while you were a team member in high school, but you can most definitely still make an impact on the team.