Adult mentors:
How do you help your team?
What's your current career?
Is this related to what you help out with on the team?
I was asked to help during a big transition with mentors 3 years ago, had a crash course in FIRST and stayed on. I’ve helped with all the non-engineering aspects of running a team. Business plan, budgets, travel, approaching sponsors, parent involvement, communicating what the team is doing, setting up systems for getting from point A to point B. I often bring up the “ethics” of a decision. Staying organized. My goal is to always help set it up so this very student run team can continue to do it themselves and take ownership. I am a factotum. My son is team president this year and I hope to move on to helping with a regional. He has been so mature about having his mom on the team.
I was a Project Coordinator for many research studies at Johns Hopkins for years and those are the skills that I use with the team. It’s amazing how many of the skills are the same. I am a RN with a Masters degree in Public Health. I have worked on many “Indian” reservations and with the Amish and continue to be interested in cross-culture issues and issues that affect the world. I often see things in terms of the big picture.
But careers have not been linear for me and I am often juggling a few things at the same time. I am a former forest ranger and have taught outdoor education one day/week for the past 15 years. I have been a school nurse. I love being around kids. I am taking a little break from Hopkins now. For the past 2 years, I've worked part time as a “descriptive analyst” for the McCormick company. I have the ability to taste, smell and describe products. So I work in a group that helps McCormick develop new products, foods you’ve all probably eaten. Team 007 is hoping to have a few more fundraising taste-testings this year!
FIRST is amazing in that it is about science and technology. But it is so much more. It is one of the best educational programs I’ve ever seen, despite the fact that I'm still at a loss to describe pneumatics
.