Quote:
Originally Posted by Hallry
1. So here's my worry about this. High school students are busy. My fear is that there will be students on teams needing a lot of help who put their trust in F4 Connect, and become connected with a "mini-mentor" student. Sure this might seem good at first and the student in need can get some help and advice, but what happens when there gets to be too much on the "mini-mentor"'s plate? Let's say it's the middle of his/her junior year. There are so many more important things that the "mini-mentor" should prioritize in life: school work, college/SAT/ACT/AP prep, their own FRC team, an actual job, other extracurriculars and sports, family life, and yeah, even socializing with friends. Once all of this piles up, either the "mini-mentor" doesn't have time to help the student and leaves them even worse off than they were before, or the "mini-mentor" prioritizes poorly and falls behind on their homework, job hours, or even getting out of the house to have some fun. Then it'll all fall down just like the fragile game this concept seems to be named after.
2. I like it the idea, really. It's a good concept on paper but I'm afraid the execution won't be as easy as it sounds. Leave the mentoring to the mentors.
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1. I don't think it would really take up that much time, maybe a few hours total over the course of several weeks. It certainly would be no time compared to how much time most students spend working on their own robot. However, everyone manages their time differently, so while I think I would have been able to handle it, there are probably a lot of kids who could not handle it as well.
2. I completely agree that it would be hard and that is why I am merely suggesting it as opposed to doing it myself (and I won't be a student next year).
While the details and execution definitely need some refining, overall I think this is more of an under-served area of help than general technical questions and is one where people don't have to be experts to make a meaningful contribution to the community, making it an interesting and useful thing for students to do.