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Originally Posted by Beth Sweet
I guess that I'd like to post this question mainly to college teams. How do you deal with summer break and a year round program?
I know that on our team, (and the second I post this I'm going to get an email saying I'm wrong) none of our mentors live within an hour of the college and all have either summer jobs or internships. I would love to continue to do things over the course of the summer (fundraisers, etc) but the entire mentor base is so scattered this just doesn't seem possible.
Are other college teams experiencing this problem? How do you all cope?
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First of all; let me say I'm not on a college team per say, but do have experience with a
few student governments that are dealing with the same problem.
What I've observed is that the governments who have at least one person coordinating things at the University tend to be a lot better organised and efficient. Location really can matter for some things, and the benefit of that is great (even if the people are working full time at something else).
That said; there's only so much that can be done over the summer when geography is a problem. I'd say that there are certain types of work which are better suited to being completed over the summer when people are more isolated and these things mainly are:
Planning (thinking up new programs to do, where to start a Lego League team, where to fundraise, who to approach, etc.)
Technical things (e.g. web stuff, practicing programming neat things, etc.)
Chairman's/Broader Team Activities (e.g.
RCU,
openFIRST ,
FIRST Wiki and other
FIRST Related Organisations )
Graphic Design / Team visual identity things
Cleaning/organising the working space (not necessarily the most fun thing to do; but valuable none the less)
Doing all of those is helped immensely if you keep in contact with the people on your team you should be working with (be that through e-mail, AIM, MSN Messenger, Phone, Skype, or whatever other medium works best).
That said; if you're planning, don't plan out every little nuance without consulting the students you're supposed to be guiding, etc. that just leads to a feeling of being left out and does more harm than good. Broad, general things and laying the groundwork for some ideas should be good, though.
Anyway, best of luck with your summer plans.