The 6 Week Build Season and 'Mentor Burnout'

[Rich Kressly]

Originally Posted by pfreivald

As a person who also teaches community college night classes (and is president of our local beekeeping association, and is on my local school board), I'm not sure how I can say NO NO NO A THOUSAND TIMES NO without people understanding it.

I am one of the busiest human beings I know. The moment build season ends, I'm doing other things with my nights. Community colleges will not adjust their semester schedule to accommodate additional weeks of FIRST. The school board will not reschedule meetings. The bee club will still meet the second Monday of every month; the officers the first.

Reducing FIRST to "only" 3-4 days a week, but extending the number of weeks, will create MORE conflicts which will cause MORE exhaustion and MORE burnout, not less. It will render us unable to put in the concentrated time necessary to do the other things we want to do well.

...And that's not even considering the "keeping up with the Joneses" work ethic that many of us middle-tier FIRST teams have--we want to become elite teams, and as I said before, I have a very hard time betting against the work ethic of the likes of Wildstang, Simbotics, Miss Daisy, and other such top-tier teams. I assume that most of them will not moderate their work schedule, but will instead squeeze every minute out that they can--and those that don't will probably stop being top-tier teams in a matter of years.

Burnout became a problem when FIRST added the withholding allowance. "To address problem A, we added X. It caused problem B. So let's not remove X and figure out better ways to address A, let's tinker with Z instead." Um, what?

Agreed here ... wholeheartedly.
If I ever step back into FRC it needs to somehow fit with my job/travel schedule, other robotics programs we run for younger kids, baseball coaching I do, and generally being able to support/be there for other activities that I'm not running or helping to run, but my kids participate in which currently include: hockey/skating classes, band, church youth, school talent shows and plays, on and on. This all is not to mention other "tugs" I get from folks who'd like me to be on the board of their organizations, run for school board, etc - All worthwhile causes.

I suppose there are two lenses to look through on this issue:
1. Looking at FRC as "the" place I volunteer my time
2. Looking at FRC as "one of the many places" I volunteer my time

It also matters how wide a team's mentor base is.
...and, if you set mentor burnout aside for a second - impact on the students. Eat up more of the year where a student is "obligated" in some way to the team, that's one more chunk of time they can't pursue other interests. Gotta be a balance somewhere and some teams do this better than others.

For me, if I were a single young professional without kids of my own and without other activities I'm passionate about and involved in, I think I'd be more supportive of a position like my friend Mr. Hibner puts forth.

With the place I'm at in my life now, however, an extended "build" in FRC is something that I'm really not in favor of.