Mentors

[oracle_nick]

I was wondering what teams had an adult as their mentor in the driver area or if they had a student. Also which you like better adult or student or what you wished you would have done.

[sanddrag]

No adults in the driver area and no adults in the pit. Seems to work pretty well for us. Not a lot of other teams can say that about their adults. Totally awesome.

[MissAbi]

We go with an adult mentor. I think we had a student out there one year (2001) and we had issues with being brushed aside by other teams during the pre-match stratedgy time. Having an adult has given us more of a voice (unfortunately).

[Gadget470]

As a member of the drive team.. our mentor decided to be passive and let us make the calls, and then give his opinion.

All strategy was done by either myself, the driver, or the HP with the students of our alliances. I do think the presence of an adult mentor does help us to be taken seriously by other teams and their mentors. Maybe they think what we are saying is what the mentor wants us to say, or maybe they have faith in us students. Whatever it is, I liked having an adult mentor able to keep composure and know what to watch for while we watch the bot

[Amanda Morrison]

Team #1020 had one of our seniors, Brandon Mensing, take the field in the mentor position. I think our team felt he was comfortable with rulings and strategy, and he had just as much 'elbow-deep' experience in the robot as the drivers. He did an excellent job in St. Louis (considering), and helped our drivers keep up team spirit and gracious professionalism.

I hope every team has as good of an experience with student mentors as we did this year.