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Unread 19-04-2005, 18:15
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Re: When do mentors go too far?

Quote:
Originally Posted by Paul H
Not to sound like a jerk or anything, but I have one question for all of you advocating "student designed and built" bots. Did you use this year's kit chassis and transmissions? If so, you used something designed by engineers and built by professionals, likely with no student input. How is that any better than an engineer designing a chassis, probably with more student help than the kit chassis, and helping the students build it?
There is nothing wrong with using engineer built and designed parts, I completely understand that somethings are out of the range of what a student can do. What I say when it comes to being a student designed and built robot is more of a harmony between engineers, mentors, and students. There is nothing wrong with mentors helping students build a robot, but when they take over the process and students get left out, that is when I think there is a problem. All of our robots have had engineer built parts, thats fine, what is nice is that the engineer showed us how and why their part works.

What I have been trying to state is that collaboration is fine, but domination is not. I understand that nothing is truly 100% student built, thats fine. The point of this post, and the thread as a whole is really trying to build an understanding between mentors and students that working together is fine, but when the mentors take over, students should ask themselves how much are they really getting out of FIRST when all they get to do is drive their robot.
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