Someone sent me a message (by the way this is a much better method than just repping people) that said my original post was angry and bordered on offensive to mentors and after rereading it while some things were fine they were right!
I apologize it was unbecoming and i wish to make a new stab at it and see if i can do a better job... but I'm too lazy and since i think the message i sent that person touches on everything i want to say anyways I'm just going to post a modified version of it. What I'm trying to imprint is that mentors should know when to step back and be mentors. I get discouraged when i go to competitions and see robots obviously designed by grownups. Also i like talking with teams and i find too little of the students at IFI know how the robot they built work. In one thread Ive seen this was placed into a question. "When does the competition become about mentor built robots Vs student built robots?" and its true i see to much mentor involvement on some teams (not all and some of you guys are very good at being mentors). And for every one of those robots i wonder how many ideas that while not initially the best idea could develop into something amazing by the students with encouragement from a mentor. Look at this from two different views. One the mentor who works hard to help the students even comes in out of work to do extra work. Its admirable and shows their devotion to the team and to helping out students. Now look at it from a student. The mentors help with with things that might have been overall better left to the kids especially if it would be a valuable learning experience (if your a mentor and your doing something for a team that you know how to do but your not teaching others than this might be one of those times). Also in the end a student looks at a robot and can see exactly what he did. Yes a student can say its cool but an they call it their own? Can they say exactly what their part is in its development and design? This doesn't just extend to mentors though. I'm an experienced student and because of that i catch myself falling into the same trap. Is this going to be "My" robot or the "Teams" robot. Yes they may go along with it because its a cool idea but what have they contributed to make it theirs also. The last thing i want is to offend mentors I'm trying to stress that maybe mentors should look at themselves and ask are they teachers or builders? I really don't want to belittle the mentors contributions, their great and i have lots of respect for them! Its just the pains of knowing things and trying to have everyone else reap the benefit. Well that was it slightly modified to this thread. I just think that mentors should take more of a passive role and try to more guide the students to get their invention working. Uh i guess this is it in a bottle (and applies to all people with knowledge) just because you know a better way IS it a better way? I know that this whole post isn't indicative of ALL mentors on FIRST teams and maybe you don't agree (you can indicate this with a message to me not reps please) but really look at all I'm saying and maybe evaluate the merit of what I'm saying and if you yourself have noticed similar things. I hope that was better and please recognize parts of my origional post could have been better thought out.