Inclusion in FIRST

[Jon Stratis]

I don't do much with my team's recruitment efforts, so I can't contribute to that portion of the conversation. There are a few things I want to say, though:

There are a couple of posts about being assigned to clean up or sort things... My team has never had that problem. Everyone helps clean up at the end of the night - each subteam cleans up their area (with everyone on that subteam helping out), and when needed helps other subteams. Every year we spend some time organizing, which invariably leads to sorting bolts and nuts and such... Usually there are several students assigned to that (typically younger students), while others are doing other organization tasks. There is no "I'm going to build the robot while you sort the bolts" going on.

As a mentor, the hardest part of the job is to assign tasks appropriately. You want to reward those who work hard and have talent, but at the same time you don't want to be pushing aside others. You want to give the responsibility to the more experienced members of the team (juniors and seniors), but sometimes you'll have a younger member who is just better at it, or an older member who just isn't capable of being a leader. It can be extremely difficult to balance all of the competing demands and keep everyone happy. You have to put an amazing amount of effort into keeping things balanced and respectful to everyone, or you end up with someone feeling left out or neglected.