Robotics after FRC

[Jeffy]

Originally Posted by EricVanWyk

This is a bit off topic, but I recommend against mentoring FRC during your freshman year, and very strongly recommend against ever mentoring a team that you were a student on.

I half agree. Mentoring the team you were a part of is bad for many reasons.
I mentored this year in a different state than my hometown team (as a freshman in college) and felt very satisfied. It definitely takes a shift in mentality, but it can be done.

Originally Posted by Jeffy

I half agree. Mentoring the team you were a part of is bad for many reasons.
I mentored this year in a different state than my hometown team (as a freshman in college) and felt very satisfied. It definitely takes a shift in mentality, but it can be done.

What are those reasons?

[EricLeifermann]

Originally Posted by SuperNerd256

What are those reasons?

If you go straight from being a senior on a team to being a mentor on that same team the next year it is difficult. The reason it is difficult is because you have now gone from a peer working with the students to their mentor and they are now your "subordinate". The relationship is completely different and it can be hard for both the new mentor and the current students to be seen in a truly authoritative position. You might have been the team captain as a senior in high school but that isn't the same as being a mentor and being in charge.

[EricH]

I think we've gotten off onto two different tracks here.

On the topic of mentoring in college, I would suggest that we use http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/sh...ad.php?t=47004 which is still at least sporadically active and covers all of the reasons in this thread and a few others besides.


On the topic of engineering competitions in college (note that I did not say robotics competitions, and I'll go into why), there are quite a few. I know that at my school, I can think of 16 off the top of my head, and those are teams, some of whom change competitions. 16 separate teams, covering everything from on the water (concrete canoe) to over the water (steel bridge) to on the road (Formula SAE, Supermileage) to offroad (Baja SAE, SAE Clean Snowmobile) to in the air (Unmanned Aerial Vehicle, SAE Aero Design, concrete airplane). And for those of you keeping count at home, I didn't get to quite a few teams, and even if I did I'd probably miss a few that I have limited knowledge of. 'Nuff said.

Now, why limit yourself to robotics competitions? Sure, you know them quite well. But you're also depriving yourself of the opportunity to grow in another direction. I've been on the SAE Aero Design team for 5 years now, but my senior design project is the NASA Lunabotics competition. (Aren, if you're going to that competition, we should meet up sometime.) I've learned a lot about teaming, flight, crashing (), and dealing with (lack of) success from the Aero team that I really don't think I picked up in FRC.

Sometimes, getting out of that comfort zone is the best thing that can happen to you.

Oh, and protip: Two or more engineering competitions at once and you're slightly crazy. Two or more with anything above a freshman's homework level (or that of a senior with senioritis) and you can remove the "slightly" from that. Now if you'll excuse me, I have some homework to get back to...

[tsaksa]

Originally Posted by EricH

Now, why limit yourself to robotics competitions? Sure, you know them quite well. But you're also depriving yourself of the opportunity to grow in another direction. I've been on the SAE Aero Design team for 5 years now, but my senior design project is the NASA Lunabotics competition. (Aren, if you're going to that competition, we should meet up sometime.) I've learned a lot about teaming, flight, crashing (), and dealing with (lack of) success from the Aero team that I really don't think I picked up in FRC.

...

Glad to hear you say that. I would have, but you beat me to it.

Robotics is great (I am sure everyone can agree on that) but there are also a lot of other engineering challenges out there. In addition to the points you made, it is can be very expensive and require a large variety of skills to help put together a quality robotics program. It is sometimes easier for a smaller school to fund and staff some more focused competitions than robotics. A collage with a very strong mechanical engineering program but a limited software or electronics program might find a different kind of competition fits their focus better. I hope I do not offend anyone too much here, but in my opinion, there is at least some chance, robotics may not the be the absolute be all and end all of all engineering achievement.

[MrForbes]

Originally Posted by tsaksa

I hope I do not offend anyone too much here, but in my opinion, there is at least some chance, robotics may not the be the absolute be all and end all of all engineering achievement.

I got a nice challenge working on the high mileage vehicle in college...not robotics at all, and it taught me a lot.

I dont think it matters too much what you do, as long as you do something that lets you apply what you're learning in class.

[Andrew Schreiber]

Originally Posted by SuperNerd256

What are those reasons?

That you are not exposed to different attitudes, methodologies, or management styles. Also, you will be viewed as a student still.

I've been on a few different teams and had the chance to watch numerous others, I've always learned new methods for running teams or mentoring from them. Why deprive yourself of the opportunity to learn from another set of mentors and share your experiences with a group that otherwise wouldn't?

[Jenn Feathers]

Originally Posted by Andrew Schreiber

That you are not exposed to different attitudes, methodologies, or management styles. Also, you will be viewed as a student still.

I've been on a few different teams and had the chance to watch numerous others, I've always learned new methods for running teams or mentoring from them. Why deprive yourself of the opportunity to learn from another set of mentors and share your experiences with a group that otherwise wouldn't?

was it easy for you to mentor other teams? is it possible to mentor more than one FRC team during the same season? or is that something i should not even think about?

[HannahF]

Originally Posted by Jenn Feathers

was it easy for you to mentor other teams? is it possible to mentor more than one FRC team during the same season? or is that something i should not even think about?

It is possible to mentor more than one team in a season but I would not suggest it for a college student.

One of our Mentors this year is splitting his time between our team and a rookie team 3974, which is based out of his highschool alma mater. I think he has done a great job balancing both teams, but I also think it has been alot of extra work for him this season. He actually walks around wearing two shirts at competitions and switches shirts depending on which team is in a match

~Hannah

[Jenn Feathers]

Originally Posted by HannahF

It is possible to mentor more than one team in a season but I would not suggest it for a college student.

One of our Mentors this year is splitting his time between our team and a rookie team 3974, which is based out of his highschool alma mater. I think he has done a great job balancing both teams, but I also think it has been alot of extra work for him this season. He actually walks around wearing two shirts at competitions and switches shirts depending on which team is in a match

~Hannah

ah. see i go to a career center that has a team (team 2252) and i have heard that my home school Vermilion, might start a FRC team. i have been thinking about still being an active member of the mavericks my senior year, but part mentor the possible rookie team. has any one successfully tried this as a student?

[Andrew Schreiber]

Originally Posted by Jenn Feathers

was it easy for you to mentor other teams? is it possible to mentor more than one FRC team during the same season? or is that something i should not even think about?

During college I don't recommend it at all. I did it out of several teams needing programming support. It was a source of stress and nearly resulted in me leaving FIRST. It also negatively impacted my grades (which is biting me in the butt when looking for graduate schools).


As for now, (I'm a full time engineer) I do think it is doable, I am an active mentor on 79 and available for consultation on numerous other teams across the country (via phone/email/IM/skype) because some of my good friends are part of the teams. I've also been trying to work with some of the rookie teams in my area to ensure that they have a running robot come competition. I also mentor an FTC team.

However, I have to caution against this level of involvement. I'm heavily involved because I am fortunate enough to have a very flexible job and no family in the area. Most of my friends in this area are heavily involved as well (I moved to Florida from Michigan about 8 months ago and am not terribly social outside of FRC). Basically the stars aligned and allowed me to be incredibly heavily involved this year. I have decided I need to scale back my involvement a little next year. I'm working on setting it up so it is easier to remotely mentor teams (79 is over an hour drive from my house) and I am hoping to spread the workload around to some of the other software engineering mentors on 79.

Look, I can't tell you not to mentor teams, it has helped me grow as a person and as an engineer. It is a great experience.

[EricVanWyk]

There are some individuals that successfully mentor the team they were on as a student, but I've seen it fail much more often.

The issue is that you have to make the distinction between first-year mentor and 5th-year senior. They are wildly different roles: You aren't there to make a robot, you are there to help the students. This transition is always difficult. Staying with the same team makes it even more difficult, as everyone still sees you in your old position. Again, some individuals are mature enough to overcome this, but they are a very small minority.

Your first year as a mentor is like your first year as a student. You are suddenly thrust into a situation that requires new skills and new viewpoints, and it is frankly overwhelming to watch the seniors navigate the list of responsibilities. Experience as a student helps, but the skills learned as a student are a small subset of the skills to be learned as a mentor. I knew how to tune PID loops, but it took me 8 years to learn how to guide a brilliant but shy student into someone who can tune a PID loop under a competition stress environment.



I mentored a team as a freshman, and in retrospect I personally wasn't prepared for it. I could handle the engineering just fine. What I couldn't handle was the classroom management, the student growth management, the lesson planning and adaptation.

I was fortunate to get my butt kicked at Olin. My professors were very talented in finding the things I needed to improve and bringing a harsh spotlight onto my flaws. They were some very hard lessons, but I couldn't be an effective mentor without them.


TL;DR: Wait a year or two and then join a team with an experienced mentor group. Its a heck of a trip.

[woodze13]

I have been a part of the IGVC team on campus. The competition is the Intelligent Ground Vehicle competition. Teams build and program autonomous robots to compete in several competitions. Most of the focus of the competition is on the effective use of sensors and programming but at least our team takes the mechanical design aspect just as seriously. Check it out http://www.igvc.org/.

[Colin P]

Shameless pitch for Michigan Tech.

The Robotic Systems Enterprise is expanding, working on the beginning stages of an underwater glider and possibly CARD if we happen to find one of those elusive money trees lying around anywhere.

We also mentor a few FIRST teams. It's a challenge, but a lot of us have been through it.

[SuperBK]

I second the IEEE contests. They also have software, T-Shirt, website, and ethics contests at an annual meeting in the Southeast every year. Here was the list of last year's contests at a conference that I attended. They leave the work/practice room open all day and night prior to the contest. Rules are stricter - no non student help.

http://www.southeastcon2012.org/StudentProgram.html