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Originally Posted by tckma
What do you mean, they won't respect you?
Being a young mentor (I'm 26), the only problems I've really run into is that the older mentors / volunteers at FIRST events sometimes still treat me like a high school kid, and yet the kids are kind of stand-offish in terms of friendship until they get to know me. It's a bit of a limboland.
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I understand what he means that the students won't respect him. I was in his position a very short time ago (I'm 20). At my school (Kettering), we spend 11 weeks taking classes, then 11 weeks working at a co-op job, and go year-round. My schedule fell that I am on "work term" during most of the FIRST season (January through the end of March), and since my co-op is GM (my team's sponsor), I could mentor the team. I had spent 3 years on the team as a student, and obviously, there were still many students that had been students with me. This was what I was most worried about -- I figured the new students would respect me and see me as a mentor, but these other students wouldn't. It ended up the total opposite -> the students I had worked with knew what I could do and respected me even more for it.
I have learned a lot from this change, though (this was my second season as a mentor).
*You're not necessarily going to have the respect of everybody, even the mentors you worked for and with, without proving to them that you can continue your success, reliability, and responsibility that you had on the team before.
*You may think you know how to mentor, but you'll quickly find out that you don't. That really comes with time and experience.
*As a young mentor, you will have to command the respect of the students. They will try to get a lot of things past you, as you're closer to their age and know them -- you've got to know BEFOREHAND what you can give into and what you can't. They'll quickly learn that you mean what you say. Also on that note, I helped out a rookie team with their Judge's Packet, which I have a lot of experience in working with. I made a point to dress nicely, have the confidence in my speech that I felt about the material, and make sure I was representing GM and Team 67 in a good way. After I worked with her students, my sister (their team leader) commented that I had really commanded their respect. This is way easier to do with students who don't know you, but you can start this right away.
If you want to ask me any questions, I'd be glad to help you out...PM or IM me.