Mentors on the team

[Joe G.]

I will speak as another former student. Let me tell you a story.

Once upon a time, I was an excited high school freshman. I'd been through five years of FLL, two years of VEX, and four years of working independently on a battlebot. I'd built some good robots for those events, and thought I knew it all. I had been counting down the days until I was old enough to join an FRC team.

The team at my high school was essentially starting fresh that year, with a new teacher, and almost entirely new students. The teacher was a laid back type. He said that the team would be mostly student run. I encouraged this, and helped to ingrain an attitude in the team that would come to haunt me years later. I did this because I was stupid, because I thought I knew all the engineering required to build one of these robots.

Build season that year destroyed me. It became apparent that I was in way over my head, along with every other student on the team. We put in many sleepless nights of work, but it wasn't enough to overcome our lack of knowledge. We had a dismal robot that year, and a lot of inter-team conflict over that dismal robot. I got excited about the chance to try again next year, and learn from my mistakes. But that's just my optimistic personality.

Next year, only 4 members of a 15 person team returned.

The next three years were filled with similar cycles. Sporadic successes were mixed in there, but for the most part, FRC went from a dream come true, to a stress-inducing chore. The team's situation did not improve, because of the "students only" attitude that I pushed so hard for my freshman year, that was too late to turn around. The majority of students left when the experience turned frustrating, and even those like me were immediately shunned upon graduation. Knowledge was gained and lost and gained again, each year. I learned much more from spending my spare time on Chief Delphi, than I did stumbling through four build seasons.

I can think of only a couple students whose life was turned towards engineering by that system.

I can think of many more talented individuals who were pushed away from engineering, because being thrown into FRC like a fish in the north atlantic made them think they were no good at engineering. I probably would have gone the same way if I hadn't had inspiring experiences pre-high school in other programs.

If a team makes students feel bad about their abilities, and discourages them from going into engineering, they are doing it wrong, no matter how much direct experience the students get.

I look back on high school and think. What if I'd worked with someone with more experience building that roller claw, instead of wasting a month, lots of PVC, and all our tubes on it? What if someone had told us our 2008 drive system was fundamentally flawed before we showed up at the regional unable to move? What if we'd worked with those great teams who would help us at the regional, rather than being told by our team's culture to shun them, because they did FIRST wrong?

And most hauntingly, I think things like this.
-What if Aaron had someone to help with that cool drive system he thought of, rather than getting frustrated and quitting?
-What if Mike was able to see all the long hours he put in on the bandsaw turn into a beautiful robot, instead of a pile of parts held together by zipties?
-What if Katie had been taught programming, instead of stumbling through it blindly?
-What if someone machined all the parts we couldn't, that Miranda CADded before she left? What if the next year, when we got some machining capabilities, there was someone who knew CAD?

Trust me when I say this. It's clear how an all mentor team is not inspiring. It's not so clear how an all student team can be even more dangerous. This post is intended to shed light on the dangers of extremes. A rigidly student run team is something many people seem to strive for.

I've lived it. I don't want you to.

Absolutes in life rarely make sense. They don't make sense with FRC teams either.

What is the maximum amount of mentor involvement allowed in a robot build, by percentage?

If design is a process of continuous improvement, the time to complete a robot is infinate. Therefore, work to be done is infinate. And therefore, students AND mentors should put in all the effort they possibly can. If either steps back or pushes the other away, the team will suffer.