[Jon Stratis]

While its tough to say, it sounds like you need to take care of yourself and your family first in this situation. It's better to take the plunge now than it would be in January - it will give the team some time to adjust to the new reality and figure out what to do. That said, there are a few things you can do now to help get the team through the next year without you:

- Help them try to find new mentors. Yes, the new mentors won't have the experience you do, but if they have the time and technical knowledge, it will be a huge help to the team.

- Pass on your knowledge. Meet with the other mentors and the student leaders on the team and make sure they know as much as you can teach them in whatever time you have. Taking notes/making a binder with faqs and info could greatly help them.

- Help them develop a plan for the build season. As sad as it may sound, losing a single member or mentor can (as in this case) severely affect what a team is capable of. If you can't be around, then the team's goals need to change. Instead of building the best robot in FIRST next year, they need to focus on getting something out there. A successful season wouldn't be measured by overall ranking or medals at competition, but by getting through the season together and having a robot that works. Set up a timeline for the build season, and make sure its clear who has the responsibility for keeping the team on it.

- Make sure they have your contact information. Yes, you may not have time to be very involved, but you can probably find the time to respond to a few e-mailed questions and point them in the right direction.

- Make sure they know of the outside resources they can depend on. Chief Delphi (obviously). Other local teams. Other teams who are willing to mentor them remotely. The FIRST community is amazing when it comes to that.


Your team was incredibly fortunate to have a seasoned FIRST mentor working with them - not very many get that as rookies (I know our team didn't). Yet, those teams manage to make it - and with passion and drive, I'm sure your team will too.

In closing, I'll just remind you (and all the other impassioned people here) that we all have lives outside of FIRST. The time we spend with our teams is amazing (both for us and for them), but real life situations come up that require us to sometimes sacrifice that time. Mentoring won't pay your bills or put food on the table (unless your students bring in cookies... hint hint if any Robettes are reading this!). As mentors, we're roll models to these kids, and making decisions that hurt our careers or families sends them the wrong message. I think more than anything we can teach them, it's how to make the right decision when the choices are difficult. How to sacrifice in order to keep going. We do it all the time when working on the robot (giving up on one bit of functionality in order to ensure the rest works like it should, for example) - we need to do it in "real life" as well.