Mentors

[Chris Nowak]

Yeah, we havent had anyone who I can say truly impacted us in any real way...every year we have had someone who was the adult leader of the team, but after storyboarding and such they were rarely around to help us and really were just our leader in name. So, basically, no.

I dont really think that it matters too much though. Sure, mentors can help, but I think that they can also intimidate people from taking initiative. Right now, our animation team is run much differently than any of the other teams because of the student leadership. Its student leadership because none of the adult leaders would have any idea what they were doing. However, in engineering, I have constantly seen good ideas crushed because there are one or two adults who didnt like that idea. Also, the sheer number of engineering mentors we have may be intimidating. Its just that many people you have to go through before an Idea can be implemented. Of course, there are plenty of cool leaders too who will listen to students, but it only takes one person to crush an Idea.

So, in my opinion, the lack of mentors s perhaps the reason I am on the animation team. If I have a good idea, I can just yell over to my team members "Is this cool?" and then I can go implement it. Basically, my point is that you shouldnt complain that you have no mentors. This isnt heavy machinery and you wont kill yourself trying to learn it by yourself, so just read the tutorials.