The negative effects of FRC

[trezelle2]

Originally Posted by Alan Anderson

Almost everything about the original post strikes me as either something that can be handled by the individual, or is part of the specific team culture.... I also think that keeping the students from running out of fuel should be one of the mentors' responsibilities.

I'd like to add also that this is a great opportunity for alumni of your team, depending on your team culture. Personally, I helped found my team as a senior ('14-'15 school year - Recycle Rush), and, due to our small team, was chosen as both Drive Coach & Team Captain. That put a lot of stress and pressure on me, and I too went without lunch one day, didn't sleep well, etc - not because of lack of support, but because as a rookie team we didn't know what we were getting into in a lot of ways.
This year, I attended college 3 hours away from my high school, but decided to long-distance mentor my team, and that I felt extremely passionate about making sure that students didn't get burned out & had realistic jobs. My main projects during the year were:

• Fall: Define the roles on the team and run them by the other mentors
• December: Present these roles to the team
• Kickoff: Right after Kickoff, I interviewed the students and conferred with mentors to assign roles
• Competition: Support the team leaders

To elaborate, our team was small and we all agreed to have mentors appoint team leads in different areas.
During competitions, as a new mentor, I told our lead mentor that I planned to work closely with the drive team, and that paid off. I walked with them to queue to keep nerves down, especially when our robot had problems. With our very small team, our Drive Coach was also one of our strongest members in the pit, and could have burned himself out; at one point, I pulled our pit mentors aside, and we basically banned the drive team from the pit for around 45 minutes so I could bring them to lunch and not let them rush through or go hungry. We also had to tell the team captain to leave the pit for a little while, because she hadn't let herself take a break either. We had to be more careful with rotating our pit crew, even with only 7 team members.

Parents were also great, arranging dinner plans one day when we mentors were nearly burned out as well, which was really helpful.


I think that in many ways, FIRST attracts perfectionists and those who are likely to develop such laser focus and determination bordering on stubbornness that they forego such things as food and sleep. **(This applies both to students & mentors) Once our team recognized that, we could start taking steps to prevent hunger, tiredness, and burnout.

TL;DR: A college or alum mentor is a great team-wrangler. Watch for perfectionists that may set themselves up for burnout.


**Note: I say this lovingly, and am in no way trying to place blame on the participants. It's something I've learned about myself from experience, and I notice it in members of my own team.