Graduate -> Mentor

[nfhammes]

Originally Posted by cadandcookies

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.

[Clem1640]

1640 allows graduates to become mentors. By-in-large this has worked out well, but not all students make the student-->mentor transition painlessly (or successfully).

We've found that (maybe not so surprisingly) that students who exhibit strong drive and leadership skills make good mentors and transition more smoothly from one role to the other. If a student was already teaching and guiding others in their Junior and Senior years, the prospects for their becoming effective mentors is pretty good.

[Walter Deitzler]

The Robolions (my old team) do not let grads come back as mentors for at least a year after they have graduated. We do this so that the team can get a new identity and start listening to the new leadership teams after all the old people have left. We had a case a couple years ago where an ex-captain came back as a mentor right after they graduated. The students on the team would try to put him in command as opposed to the new leadership team that was just moving in. As a mostly student run team, this was a headache for the new leadership involved and we ended up telling the guy to not come back for a year. Everything went smoothly after that.

It was not even that the guy was trying to take control, just that people defaulted to him as "leader". So we put the alums away for at least a year so that the younger students find a new "leader" to listen to and develop on their own as a team.

[Jorge Ayala]

My team allows and encourages students to come back as mentors. However, not every student is fit to be mentor right away. As someone stated in a previous reply, committed and mature students perform better as mentors. There are some students that cannot cope with studying a degree in engineering and also working 3 or more hours a day with a team; I have seen this.

I graduated from high school and my team lacked mentors. The headcoach of the team spoke with me and asked me to stay, I was not very sure at the time, because of what was said here at Chief Delphi about mentoring as a college student, but I gave it a shot. I turned out to be one of the best decisions I have ever made. Right now I am about to start my third year of engineering (I study mechatronics engineering) and I have learnt a lot and I have had very great opportunities due to my direct involvement with the corporate sponsors of the team. Also, being able to inspire and help students grow is a great experience that is hard that you find in any other extracurricular activity during college.

However, it is important to mention that it has put some strain on me and during the semester of competition and my grades have not been as good as they could be and in a lot of situations I need some serious help from my friends to understand some things that I miss from my classes, but that has not been a big deal. Even though I have an advantage, my college and my ex-high school are in the exact same place, they are the same institution, so in order to go help my team I only need to go from one building to another. So, I have it easier than other college mentors.

I really think that college mentors are really important, here in Mexico a lot of teams rely on college students to work properly. Also, a college mentor is like an "older brother" to the students of the team and that kind of relation I have seen that it is beneficial to the student in order to get inspired. Every team is different but, I think that college mentors are a good thing to have. If the adult leaders of the team see that someone is mature and responsible enough to mentor, I would offer them the chance to do so.

(Sorry if I made some grammar mistake or something of the sort, English is not my native language)

[Chirag]

So far our team hasn't had any graduates come back and mentor mostly due to our team being relatively young. I think I'll be the first graduate to return and mentor in some way.

At the moment I am planning on being sort of a "part-time" or "remote mentor" for my high school team 4761. The only reason I'm even thinking about doing this is because I'll be on break during the first two or three weeks of build season and I'll possibly be on spring break at the same time as one of the competitions we're going to attend. If I didn't have those breaks that would make it easy to work with my team, I don't think I'd be mentoring. From there I'll see how well I use my time during the breaks to help my team and see if I get too drawn into working remotely with the team when I'm back at school to the point where it affects my grades.

Since I'll know most of the students who will be on the team next year, having been one of the team co-presidents this past year, I'm expecting and hoping my transition will be pretty easy.

[IronicDeadBird]

Originally Posted by Briansmithtown

Just realize, college comes first. If you have a paper due the next day, and as boring as this sounds, your going to have to skip that meeting to get that paper done... If you plan on going to college, of course.

QFT. I'd argue the people that benefit the most from the FIRST experience are those who are not yet into college. So I believe you should establish your comfort zone and see where you are before you go over committing.

On the other hand if you don't go to college and you can afford to mentor, the added structure and potential experience you gain from it are well worth it.