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Originally Posted by ChrisCook
Did you read "when mentors go too far" The reason I started this thread was to combine the "Mentors too far" portion with the changing dynamics of a FIRST robotics team. I Feel that if you graduate, you let the team function on its own and you, yourself enjoy another level of robotics competition, rather than come back with the mindset of '5th' highschool robotics season. Becasue if i had the chance I would still be running the team next year if I wasn't attending college. FIRST is so adictive I feel that this addiction has become more of a quest for personal engineering bliss rather than really trying to ensure that other take the teams in the direction they see fit.
if the same person is in the dirvers seat all the time no ones challenges that or tries to lead a team in new direction, in short the team never evolves and everyone loses.
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Chris,
The whole “mentors going too far” thing isn’t related to the situation your team is in. The downside to solely student run teams is usually the discontinuity of the team itself. People are engaged in FIRST at different levels, and when some really gung-ho student graduates (on a team without a solid adult foundation) the team has a terrible time recovering from it. There really isn’t a whole lot wrong with coming back as a “5th year high-schooler” mentor as long as you’re committed to trying to become a contributing regular mentor for the team. That’s how I got started mentoring, as one of those “5th year high-schoolers.” You’re mistaken in thinking that everyone loses on teams with longterm support from any individual. I think I can say that every student I’ve worked with since I was a student through my mentoring years so far has learned and had a positive experience in those competition seasons.
If you really feel that after you graduate you should have nothing to do with a FIRST team, then why are you so concerned with all of this? There are lots of terrific engineering programs and extracurriculars that you can participate in during your college years. If you’re going to college nearby, I would suggest keeping your studies as your first priority but I’d also suggest mentoring your team again in 2006 if it pulls through. I suspect that since you seem to care so much about your team that you really don’t feel that coming back as a mentor is wrong, but that you’re distraught with the situation and aren’t sure how to deal with it, which is totally understandable.