[chrisstruttmann]

Being a student is definitely more fun.

I was a student on Team Voltage for four years, and now I'm back as a mentor. Voltage has a program called "Mentors-in-training" and that's basically created for college students that want to mentor. We do this because the team wants to be able to monitor college student's grades to ensure they're not slipping or become overly dedicated. I'm one such person...

anyways...

The whole experience has made me a 100% better person and totally changed me (as cliche as that may sound). When I started FIRST I wasn't a good student, I wasn't motivated, and I knew what I wanted to do but didn't know anything about how to achieve the goals.

All of that is great but there's still one experience that was the culmination of it all...

When I was a student we won our first ever Championship award for controls in 2007; I was one of the people that got to sit in the awards section to go get it. I will never ever forget when the CEO of Rockwell Automation said "This team makes control look easy..." One of the reasons we got the award (not undercutting the team, EVERYONE has a hand in our robots) was because of our amazing software that had an awesome autonomous that could react no matter what the orientation of the rack and it made control for the drivers really easy (hence the easy button that would score automatically). I was the only person on the software team that year; the mentor that taught me and I are now good friends, the whole experience was just AWESOME.

You don't get those experiences as a mentor, however, you DO get to help the students that are younger than you build the pieces to have those experiences. It's very rewarding but in a different way.

--Chris Struttmann
Voltage386 (Charge UP!)