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Originally Posted by White_Orpheus
I think all too often a team is heavily mentor run for the wrong reasons. Are you taking too much initiative because you want to see your team perform well at competition, or because you honestly believe it is more beneficial to your students to watch you work on the bot?
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Well, I've been mentoring FIRST teams for 7 years now. I cannot begin to list the things I've given up in other parts of my life to be a part of this grand experiment.
As others have pointed out, part of the reason I do this is because it IS fun. I enjoy it. I also enjoy Autocross racing. I could be spending this time making my car faster. SO why do I throw myself so heavily into FIRST? Because I truly believe this is our best chance to change our society.
To directly address what White_Orpheus said above;
I am not in this to inspire the students on my team.
There are 10s of thousands of students who are exposed to FIRST each year. We can best inspire all of them by each of us doing the very best we can to increase the excellence of each FIRST event. Our best chance at influencing 100s of thousands is to get a mass audience. To do that we need the competition to be so awe inspiring that even people who are not involved will want to watch.
My personal goal will always be to contribute to the excellence of each event. I think that is the best shot at inspiring the most people.
Matt B.