|
Re: Mentors
Mentors provide shared Experience and earned Wisdom
through having been through the trenches. (learned lessons)
Learned lessons come hard.
Mentorless teams unfortunately but frequently have tough experiences ...
Mentors can help inexperienced youth learn & apply
standard industry practices
to produce a robot more likely to achieve the desired functions, reliably,
and employing KISS
to survive through the beating received in test then
in a couple regionals and a national.
(assumes youth respectful, willing even eager to learn and apply for success)
Still I believe there should be FIRST competition tiers:
The stand alone students deserve to compete against like peer's
(especially those that have EARNED it thru prior FIRST experience)
1. Wholly student designed & built
2. Industry Mentored co-built designs & built (apprentice - mentor)
3. Wholly Industry designed & built
4. Some other TBD tier
Assuming 84 teams / tier for the Nationals....
WHAT A REVELATION
IF IN THE NATIONAL PLAYOFFs
Tier 1 trimphs over tiers 2 & 3... to take it all !!!!
Maybe that would boost FIRST viewer appeal
and more commercial station coverage buy-in
and feed proceeds back to FIRST for exponential growth !
(2004 = my 6th yr incl Nat/Reg Champ, Region runner-up, awards Esthetics, Engr Insp, Sportmanship)
|