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Re: Attn: Present & Future College Students, Think carefully before you mentor
I have found that mentoring in the fall is much more effective for me than mentoring during build season.
1) Fall mentoring has no 6 week deadline, so you don't feel so bad missing a session or two to ensure you pass classes.
2) It is much easier to ask an uninitiated fellow college student to teach a single session in a topic in their major than it is to ask them to join during build season. It is actually a rather effective mentor recruiting tool.
3) I firmly believe that many mentors are counter productive during build season. I refuse to do much beyond ensuring the HS student's safety and wellbeing during the build season. From my own HS experience, I know that an overzealous mentor can quickly ruin a student's self esteem with a momentary "I'll do it for you" attitude.
Also, recruit as many low-commitment people as you can. Everyone who graduated high school is qualified to be a low-commitment mentor. Try and get the people who claim to know nothing of anything: they are best at supporting students without squashing them. Ask them to come "once or twice" during build season, and space them out. This has two primary benefits. The first is that each low-commitment mentor allows a core mentor to focus on school better. The second is that each low-commitment mentor will ask a student to explain what is going on, and this explanatory process is where the students usually learn the most about their robot. Olin only has engineering students, so I usually try to grab the Bio-Es for this.
Remember, it is not your job to build a robot. It is your job to act as a glorifeied hybrid safety monitor / white board.
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