Go to Post My father taught me long ago that how we respond to adversity is what defines us as human beings. Let's all keep this definition in mind as we move forward to change a culture. - Rich Kressly [more]
Home
Go Back   Chief Delphi > FIRST > General Forum
CD-Media   CD-Spy  
portal register members calendar search Today's Posts Mark Forums Read FAQ rules

 
 
 
Thread Tools Rate Thread Display Modes
Prev Previous Post   Next Post Next
  #17   Spotlight this post!  
Unread 28-06-2015, 04:00
nfhammes's Avatar
nfhammes nfhammes is offline
Non-Engineering Mentor, Volunteer
AKA: Nick Hammes
FRC #0254 (The Cheesy Poofs)
Team Role: Mentor
 
Join Date: Dec 2013
Rookie Year: 2011
Location: Mountain View, CA
Posts: 35
nfhammes is an unknown quantity at this point
Re: Graduate -> Mentor

Quote:
Originally Posted by cadandcookies View Post

Frankly, I'm not sure I made the right choice mentoring my first year of college. It worked for me, and it worked for both of the teams I helped (both teams made it to their state tournaments), but I can think of so many ways it could have gone wrong. If I had a heavier schedule or more difficult classes, studying on the bus on the way to help my teams wouldn't have been possible. If tournaments didn't fall in the right places relatives to my quizzes and tests, it would have been impossible for me to make it to their regionals. I ended up in the right place, at the right time, with the right schedule, and if anything had been off, it wouldn't have worked.

[ . . . ]

The key for me was realizing that I could not be the mentor I wanted to be the first year I worked with a team. Heck, I hesitate to say that what I did could even be called mentoring-- I was trying to do a combination of help the team, help the students grow as individuals, and help myself grow by learning how to and how not to mentor. Over the course of the year, I realized that why I wanted to be a mentor had very little to do with winning, and only a bit to do with building a robot-- I found value in mentoring because I felt I was genuinely positively impacting the students on the team's lives, and looking back, I classify that as a valid reason for me to work with a team my freshman year of college. I may not be the theoretical best possible mentor for my team-- I'm too young, I live too far away, and I don't have the technical expertise for most aspects of the robot, but I filled a role that needed to be filled, and positively impacted the team, the students, the mentors, and myself in my own small way, while still managing to have a great time in college and keeping good grades.

I don't think there's a correct way of handling alumni mentoring-- it depends so much on the team's situation and that of the alum to generalize. I think most healthy, consistent teams can deal without having alumni coming back immediately, but for some teams that can be the only thing keeping them from folding.
I think what you've described of your own experience is a good case outcome of college students being mentors. One important thing that you didn't bring out is that it also takes someone ready to step into that role; if you weren't mature and level-headed enough, and focused, things may not have turned out so well. I think even within just a single team, there can be some alum who are ready to hit the ground running as a mentor for their own team or another, others who should take a year off, and others yet who should take more time off. Being a college mentor involves several dimensions of balancing act, and a number of different skills that one may not be used to practicing, and some people just aren't ready for that as teenagers.

I think a big part of what good college mentors do is growing themselves as mentors; they have something to contribute from their prior experience with FIRST, but they're obviously not contributing at the level of mentors who've been in industry for 20 years. They're simultaneously learning more they can contribute at school, and learning to contribute more effectively by example of their fellow mentors. But they also have the experience of having been in high school recently, and can connect to the students differently, and can be impactful role models of a slightly different type.
__________________
FRC 254 Mentor: Offseason 2014 - Present
FRC 2855 Mentor: 2013 - 2014
GOFIRST Member, Officer: 2011 - 2014

Enthusiastic Emcee, Misplaced Minnesotan, Friendly FIRSTer
Reply With Quote
 


Thread Tools
Display Modes Rate This Thread
Rate This Thread:

Posting Rules
You may not post new threads
You may not post replies
You may not post attachments
You may not edit your posts

vB code is On
Smilies are On
[IMG] code is On
HTML code is Off
Forum Jump


All times are GMT -5. The time now is 17:39.

The Chief Delphi Forums are sponsored by Innovation First International, Inc.


Powered by vBulletin® Version 3.6.4
Copyright ©2000 - 2017, Jelsoft Enterprises Ltd.
Copyright © Chief Delphi