[Brandon Holley]

I imagine every mentor from 125 could comment on here and offer some insightful piece of information....why? because our entire team is run solely by college mentors.

The difference in our team than most teams is the college base. We are based in a college, not in a single high school. Therefore, our mentors have for the most part come from students who were on FIRST teams in high school, and then came to Northeastern University and decided they want to mentor. It gives our team a very different dynamic.

This thread appears year in and year out. I've posted in them before, but I'll just give my brief opinion.

In the case of a college student coming to mentor a different team than they were on in HS, the transition, while not easy, is not as difficult as someone coming directly from HS and on to mentor the same team. The point has been brought up here already...it is VERY difficult to shed the student image and put on the mentor cap in just a summer (and for some people it could be even less than that). While this doesn't mean it can't be done (we have mentors on our team who were on the team in HS), it still doesn't mean that it should be done, just for the sake of being a mentor.

I can understand any high school students desire to return to their team (FIRST is very very addictive) however you must really make a mature decision. Are you going back to give back? or are you going back just to be back? I'm willing to bet almost everyones first answer is, "I want to give back"...and this honestly is expected as we have been taught that GP and giving back are the right things to do. However consider the fact that for some people, FIRST has been your way of life for 4 years...some of your friends are moving away to college, or moving on with their lives. It is very difficult to give up something like FIRST when it has played such a huge role in your life.

For me, I left team 11 in NJ for team 125 in Boston. When I arrived at the team, I honestly did not know what to expect...was it going to be a big team, small team, student run, mentor run...I didn't know. But the fact remained, I was a college student, on a new team. I had some FIRST experience under my belt, and I was ready to jump back in to FIRST. The first year of 125 for me was a chaotic one. Finding your place as a mentor, in a pool of other mentors is not something that is easily done, especially with the task of the first year of engineering classes and dorm life. However, 4 years later, I am still on 125, still trying to be the best mentor I can.

Don't let anyone tell you otherwise...you cannot be "the adult mentor" as a college student. By "the adult mentor" I am referring to the engineers or parents or old timers on your home teams. However, this doesn't mean you can't be one of the best mentors our there, or someone who leads the team, or someone who runs the show. Being a college student, puts you at close proximity in terms of age to the high school students. For me, I think it's an advantage to college students who have the right attitude. You are able to relate VERY well to what some of the high school kids are going through. The lessons you learned in high school are still relatively fresh in your memory, and the mistakes you learned from are still there as well.

It may not be just robot or team related stuff. It could be applying to colleges, or applying for scholarships...you offer a world of insight that some other adult mentors simply cannot. As time goes by, I think the college student will evolve from:
"5 year FIRSTer" - someone who is mentoring a team for the sake of staying involved in FIRST, whether they can admit that or not to
"The college mentor" - a college student beginning to understand how to mentor properly, and how to establish themselves as someone high school kids can relate to. As well as learning how to distance themselves from the high school students in terms of interaction and "rank"...until finally they become
"The adult mentor" - which is the mentor we all know and love, the one we right WFA entries about, the one who really knows how to carry a team.

For some college students, this transition from "5 year FIRSTer" to "The adult mentor" can never fully happen. This doesn't mean that sometime down the road they won't be an amazing adult mentor, it just means that while in that college timeframe, the mentor/student jsut doesn't have the ability to sort out some of these issues.

However for many college students that transition can occur in the time you are in college. I have seen it happen myself.

Myself, I feel I am still in "The College Mentor" role, however I like that role. I feel I can relate to what some of the high school kids are going through. We can agree on what music to put on in the lab, or we can agree what movie "totally rocked dude". Its a very special dynamic that I don't think everyone in FIRST realizes is there or happening.


The question comes down to, what do you feel you are capable of doing? Making that mature decision to take a year off from FIRST may not be such a bad idea...Looking back at things, I am certainly glad I jumped right into FIRST again after high school but I also can recognize how a year or 2 off can help someone make that "mentor transition" a little bit easier, especially if returning to the same team.

This wasn't as short as I wanted it to be, but I hope my experience going through this transition can help future mentors everywhere.

-Brando