Being a mentor is about coaching a group of teenagers (when preschoolers are your preferred age group
) for several months for a chairman's award presentation, waiting nervously in a hallway while they make their presentation and wishing you could be a fly on the wall, then having your heart drop through your stomach when your team name is NOT announced as having won the award... and then finding each and every one of them to give them a hug for the fantastic job they did because it's NOT about the winning, it's all about the process you go through together working towards the goal. It's not unlike being pregnant and giving birth to a child - as any parent will attest.
Being a mentor is about patience, frustrations, long days, and giving up your vacation to be a chaperone for a robotics team. Being a mentor is about watching an insecure 14 year old turn into a confident 17 year old, about watching a student who came to the team as someone who didn't have any friends suddenly discover there are other people like herself out there... And in the end I hope that when I die, someone from my team will be my age and reading the obituaries in the paper and say to his wife, "Wow, I remember Mrs. Kentfield, she was a mentor on my robotics team back in high school!" That's all I ask.