Hardest personal lesson learned?

[P.J.]

That I'm not the best suited one for my job on my team anymore, and that's okay.

For the past 5 years I've been the head of our strategy team, and this year one of my alums came back as my junior mentor/mentor in training on the strategy team. Watching him work, I realized that he's better at this than me. This was a very difficult pill to swallow at first, as I felt that this meant that I was failing as a mentor. It's hard to admit that this strategy team that I built from nothing to what it is today has outgrown me, that there is a "new mentor on the block" that is better suited to lead the team into the future.

However over a long period of time (much longer than it should have taken) I have now realized that it's okay to hand off the torch to someone better suited for a job. It's part of life. I'm incredibly proud of him, and having watched him grow from his freshman year of high school to now has been absolutely amazing. I love him like a little brother, and I'll be honored to defer to his judgment in the years to come.

[indieFan]

Originally Posted by P.J.

This was a very difficult pill to swallow at first, as I felt that this meant that I was failing as a mentor.

I see this as quite the opposite. When the student surpasses the mentor who has put in so much time and effort, it means the mentor has achieved the goals of this program. I hope in time you can view your success in this way.

[maxnz]

Don't stand in front of (or behind) a robot when it is enabled. (I was holding the Ethernet tether by the robot and the driver accidentally reversed into me. Don't worry, it had the bumpers on and was only about 1-1.5 feet away from me, so it didn't have time to accelerate and didn't hurt very much. Still. Be careful.)

[Tyler_Kaplan]

To never take anything personally. The team didn't go with your design/idea/strategy/whatever? That's totally fine. I think learning to not take anything personally in a business and professional setting is a valuable lesson. It's not because the team is against you, and in fact you should embrace the fact that you're surrounded by people who are intelligent in that field, and can come up with amazing ideas.
This is something I learned when I was a student on 2085, and is one of my favorite life lessons.

[RoboMom]

Originally Posted by Tyler_Kaplan

To never take anything personally. The team didn't go with your design/idea/strategy/whatever? That's totally fine. I think learning to not take anything personally in a business and professional setting is a valuable lesson. It's not because the team is against you, and in fact you should embrace the fact that you're surrounded by people who are intelligent in that field, and can come up with amazing ideas.
This is something I learned when I was a student on 2085, and is one of my favorite life lessons.

This is very wise insight and is one of the tenets of a little book called "The Four Agreements." Personally I have to re-learn this all the time. It is hard.

[P.J.]

Originally Posted by indieFan

I see this as quite the opposite. When the student surpasses the mentor who has put in so much time and effort, it means the mentor has achieved the goals of this program. I hope in time you can view your success in this way.

In my next paragraph I mentioned that my thinking has changed since then. It was a silly way of thinking on my part, I've just never had that moment where the student becomes the master and I didn't quite know how to feel about it. But I'm so incredibly proud of him and all the hard work he has put in this year.

[GreyingJay]

Some great lessons here.

For me I echo the comment someone made above that I'm not necessarily the best person for the (any) job, and I'm learning to embrace that.

I could, if needed, step into a variety of roles on my team, as a software mentor, business mentor, pit crew, and so on. Though I only have one prior year of FRC mentoring, I have lots of experience from a variety of past projects that would benefit the team. I've worked with students in other roles, I've helped run other non-profits, I've done marketing, fundraising, promotions, merchandise, websites, social media, video production.

"If needed" is the operative word. We have been lucky to have lots of mentors, parents, and students who want to step into these roles. It's tempting for me to want to inject my opinion on basically everything the team does that overlaps my skill set. I've had to remind myself that others are just as capable, if not more so, and to let them do their thing. It doesn't always end up looking exactly like how I'd envision it, but if the team is happy, then so am I! There's never just one right answer.

[marshall]

The hardest personal lesson I learned this season...

I've never wanted to be a teacher. Both of my parents were teachers. They weren't miserable and both enjoyed what they did but I never wanted to be a teacher. I still don't want to be a teacher. To be clear, I have tons of respect for teachers and I think the world of anyone who gives up what they do. I just don't want to be one.

This was the year I learned that I am one. It turns out mentors are teachers. Oops.

What's more aggravating to me is that this is the year that I finally learned what I want to teach my students. I don't actually want to teach them about science or math. I don't care if they learn engineering skills from me. I learned this year that the thing I want to teach is almost impossible to teach someone. I want my students to learn passion. I want them to care so much about what they are doing that they infect other people with it... be that FRC or anything else.

So yeah... that's been an eye-opener for me this year.

[Collin4564]

The hardest thing I learned this season is that things don't always go your way.

Our team this year was incredible and we built a very high-quality robot. I felt great about our performance as we placed very highly at our events preceding championships. While we were one of the best robots at our events we didn't win and only were finalists at one of our three events.

I hoped to go to championships and do fairly well. Unfortunately during our last match in semifinals, we lost communication and drove onto the alliance wall. This was an extremely unlucky way to lose a match that we were predicted to win. One of our seniors was very upset because he couldn't do anything in his last match driving. We also had some tough luck with refereeing, but in the end, we built a great robot and had lots of fun as a team. I learned that sometimes things just don't work out and are out of our control. I also learned that along with experience and a great robot it requires some luck to do well at competitions. It is important to understand this and move on and keep a positive attitude after things like this happen.

Later on during Einsteins we were cheering and finally had our spirits back.

[GreyingJay]

Originally Posted by marshall

The hardest personal lesson I learned this season...

I've never wanted to be a teacher.

This was the year I learned that I am one. It turns out mentors are teachers. Oops.

What's more aggravating to me is that this is the year that I finally learned what I want to teach my students. I don't actually want to teach them about science or math. I don't care if they learn engineering skills from me. I learned this year that the thing I want to teach is almost impossible to teach someone. I want my students to learn passion. I want them to care so much about what they are doing that they infect other people with it... be that FRC or anything else.

You know what, I take my previous lesson back. That was still an important lesson to me but it's not the most important.

The most important was a combination of what you've posted -- and a caveat. It's good to remember that we're not here to build robots. We're here to build students. The caveat is that it takes time, and not every student will get there at the same time, or even get there at all. And that's OK. Some change seems overnight. Others will take far longer. Our job is to be passionate. The rest isn't up to us.