Mentors on the team

[SteveGPage]

Originally Posted by nileshp87

I think we can all agree that there exists some teams where the mentors do all or most of the work on the robot.

To me personally, as a student, FIRST is FRC is a competition that takes place in high school. Having a robot be built almost entirely by mentors feels akin to cheating (or maybe bad sportsmanship).

Think of it as a spelling bee with little kids in it, then some adult comes and spells all the words for his\her kid in their place. Then tries to play it off as some kind of educational experience.

I can understand how you feel that way, but to use your own analogy, FRC is a competition that takes place in high school, but the challenge is that the rules and requirements of the competition are designed for someone in college. FRC is going to force you to stretch beyond what you have ever done before, and beyond what you have ever learned before. We, the mentors, want to give you knowledge to do so, and since FIRST doesn't expect you to know how to do it on your own, they have set up the competition to give you that level of support. It isn't cheating use the help that FIRST has put there for you.

There is a great quote, which I'll paraphrase since I don't recall the exact wording, from the book "The New Cool" --- "Why would I want to build a bicycle by myself, when I could build a Ferrari, with the help of a mentor?"

We just want you to be able to the do the best you can do, which is why most of us are here.