Mentors

[shyra1353]

once again i would like to thank everyone for their replies ...

i think that my team does not know what they are getting themselves into .. i know that some of them are in it just to build the robot and not for the overall experience, and i am hoping that kickoff will change that ... but i do not want a Battlebots team because i am in it for the experience and not the robot ...

kpugh: some of my team members have been to workshops on certain things like pneumatics and drive trains and so on ... but they still do not think that we need mentors ...

Andy B.: i want to apologize on behalf of Dmitri i do not think he meant to insult anyone with what he said ....

i dont want my team to "waste" a year because we do not have mentors ..

once again thanks everyone for their suggestions

--shyra

[Steve W]

If you find me at the CR kick-off I would be willing to meet a few of your team members for a few minutes of Q&A or info sharing. If you think seeing a robot up close would be good I could see about bringing ours to the kick-off. Let me know.

[Redhead Jokes]

Originally Posted by shyra1353

i think that my team does not know what they are getting themselves into .. i know that some of them are in it just to build the robot and not for the overall experience, and i am hoping that kickoff will change that ... but i do not want a Battlebots team because i am in it for the experience and not the robot ...
i dont want my team to "waste" a year because we do not have mentors ..

2001 our team was student run, very crazy stuff going on, a student who built a robot on his own, the rest of the team building a robot that didn't make it to the competition. National championship won that year.

2002 a lot of division and fighting.

2003 2 families teamed up to make sure the program didn't die. Lots more mentors showed up. Lots of wonderful huge steps for our team in so many many ways.

A student this year is so inspired by a mentor, that on his own he's pursuing the Woodie Flowers Award for the mentor. That mentor has inspired others on the team, to join in on the nomination.

I don't think it'll be a waste of a year for your team. It'll be part of the journey. It will be a learning experience. There was a rookie team last year that did beautifully with little mentorship. There was a rookie team that adamantly wanted no mentors and didn't do well.

We are experiencing mentors coming out of the woodwork excited to be a part of this whole experience.

2002 taught our team a lot, and gave us goals for 2003, springing us forward in giant leaps.

There are some words from Dean Kamen

about mentors

[JVN]

Originally Posted by shyra1353

How do I convince my team that we need mentors ??

so my question to you is this ... How did you convince your team that you need mentors and do you have any tips for me on how to do it ??

Well, I've got one major suggestion...

Show them some of the incredible FIRST robots from past years. Show them Wildstang and Chief swerving all over the field. Show them Beatty walking through all opposition in 2002. Show them the Technokats and their massive tanktread drive systems. Show them 60 and 308 lifting the goals in 2002.

Ask them... "Would we be able to do this without a mentor? Don't you think our chances of success are better if we have REAL ENGINEERING help? Don't you guys want to LEARN?"

See what they think.

John
www.firstrobotics.net is your best friend.

[shyra1353]

thanks everyone for taking the time to help my team with this ... means a lot to me. personally i think bursting their egos would get the idea across the best, but that wouldnt work because it would cause problems within the team that can be avoided. i think that the autonomous idea on the edubot is a good idea and i will have us try that asap ... i have shown videos of old games from last year .. but i think that showing them the 2002 bots might be a good idea because from what i have heard they had some pretty spectacular designs ...

the mentor that we had the other day was just helping us for that day because he has to go back to university soon which is 4 hours away ( or something like that ) and in all actuality he was doing me a favour because i know him outside of robotics ... so having him to help us during the build season is not a possibility

thank you to everyone once again for replying and for the ideas .. i would greatly appreciate it if you kept them coming and i will give all of these a try .. thanks once again

-- shyra

[Dmitri]

Oh and the BabyBot is the BetaBot while the Botfather is the Real Bot, mmkay?

[Marygrace]

Umm, I have a question, do you guys plan to go to Nats or any far away regionals because not only can mentors help with the robot and guiding the build season, but companys and buissnesses would respect an adults word more than a teenager from highschool. This could be just another factor you can point out. Unless everyone is willing to pay for their own ticket and regiristration, and hotel, ur gonna need sponsors.

[shyra1353]

Originally Posted by Marygrace

Umm, I have a question, do you guys plan to go to Nats or any far away regionals because not only can mentors help with the robot and guiding the build season, but companys and buissnesses would respect an adults word more than a teenager from highschool. This could be just another factor you can point out. Unless everyone is willing to pay for their own ticket and regiristration, and hotel, ur gonna need sponsors.

nats is a dream for us .. but realistically it probably wont happen this year ... we are lucky enough to be only 15 minutes away approximately from the arena where the Canadian Regional is being held so we don't have to worry about hotels and plane tickets for that .. and yes businesses and companies do respect an adults word over a teenagers, but the stipulation for the team was that it would be student-run, however during phone calls, i do make sure the company knows that they can speak to our principal to make sure that we are actually a team

[indieFan]

Originally Posted by shyra1353

...but the stipulation for the team was that it would be student-run, however during phone calls, i do make sure the company knows that they can speak to our principal to make sure that we are actually a team

Can you clearly define for me what you mean by "student-run"?

From everything I have read, the students are running around with no "adults" other than yourself. This is, in my opinion, similar to letting the lunatics run the asylum simply because students have not necessarily learned many of the skills that are needed to effectively run the team on their own.

I also believe, that it is this definition of "student-run" that has led to the students on your team thinking that they do not need any mentors. It could have been the mere "implication" that planted the seeds within the students minds. However, in order to know if this is even a possiblity, it is necessary to know the definition of "student-run".

indieFan

[KenWittlief]

There are two aspects to a FIRST team

one is the part of the team that is very much like a HS club, like a chess club or ski club. There are meetings to schedule, uniforms, public service - and many other considerations that bond the students together as a unit, as a club, as a team - these things should definately be 'run' by the students

the other part is the engineering aspect of the robot design and build cycle. Unless your HS students have earned BSEE and BSME degreees already, how can they lead or run an engineering team?

If we could throw a box of parts at HS students and let them build a robot on their own, and have them somehow discover what engineering careers are like, then FIRST wouldnt be going through all this trouble to find corporate sponsers and thousands of mentors.

I think letting the students run and control the club/team aspect is excellent. But to let the students think they can compete against teams that have adult engineeing mentors would be cruel and pointless - all you are doing is setting them up to fail - and then they will come to the conclusion that engineering is complicated, too hard for them, something they are not good at - in other words, they will decide engineering sucks!

[Amanda Morrison]

Originally Posted by KenWittlief

I think letting the students run and control the club/team aspect is excellent. But to let the students think they can compete against teams that have adult engineeing mentors would be cruel and pointless - all you are doing is setting them up to fail - and then they will come to the conclusion that engineering is complicated, too hard for them, something they are not good at - in other words, they will decide engineering sucks!

As a team with no adult engineering help, I'd like to think that this type of team is very possible. I don't believe that a team without the availability of adult engineers is 'cruel and pointless' by any means, and if anything, motivates the students to learn more about the subject to compete effectively.

Teams that are run by students are not necessarily destined to fail. Just because a team does not have mentors of its own does not mean that other teams cannot intervene and help. There are many successfully run student-led teams, and there are success stories from all over. While you are correct in saying that students should be in charge of the organizational matters of the team, a team is not being set up for failure in the instance that they do not have adult mentors.

No team in FIRST fails, engineerless or plentiful.

[KenWittlief]

there are many ways and degrees of failure for a FIRST team.

one I have (unfortunately) seen several times is a team that either cannot get their bot to run at all, cant get it to pass inspection, or they could not ship it by the deadline - remember the placebo bot from previous years?

its devistating to the students on a team if they goto a regional and there bot doent move in any of its matches

another level of failure would be if the students have great ideas, but are unable to implement any of them, because they dont have the knowhow - Ive said before, the technology we use in FIRST is not leading edge state of the art, its scraping edge :c) - but even still, if the students can implement their ideas they will only become frustrated, not inspired.

Over the years I have seen more and more help from one team to another - I believe you could post a request on CD to have someone write all your SW for you, or to design a 6 speed auto shifting tranny for you, and someone would step up and do it for your team

and I have seen teams completely rebuild another teams robot for them on thursday at a regional

but then, you DO have mentors helping you, they just arnt officially a part of your team - If a team is willing to accept help then you dont have to yell very loud - its available from all directions.

[shyra1353]

Originally Posted by indieFan

Can you clearly define for me what you mean by "student-run"?

when i say "student run" i mean that all the management and everything is done by me .. our staff sponsor simply gives us his room to use at lunchtime for our lunchtime meetings and thats about it .. he is also our main contact for FIRST, but he just prints out all of the emails that he receives and gives them to me .. so we are in all sense a student-run team .. from your post i got the impression that you think that i am an adult .. i am still only a 15 year old junior in high school so i do not have all the skills that an adult does ...

Originally Posted by KenWittlief

There are two aspects to a FIRST team

one is the part of the team that is very much like a HS club, like a chess club or ski club. There are meetings to schedule, uniforms, public service - and many other considerations that bond the students together as a unit, as a club, as a team - these things should definately be 'run' by the students

the other part is the engineering aspect of the robot design and build cycle. Unless your HS students have earned BSEE and BSME degreees already, how can they lead or run an engineering team?

If we could throw a box of parts at HS students and let them build a robot on their own, and have them somehow discover what engineering careers are like, then FIRST wouldnt be going through all this trouble to find corporate sponsers and thousands of mentors.

I think letting the students run and control the club/team aspect is excellent. But to let the students think they can compete against teams that have adult engineeing mentors would be cruel and pointless - all you are doing is setting them up to fail - and then they will come to the conclusion that engineering is complicated, too hard for them, something they are not good at - in other words, they will decide engineering sucks!

i agree with you with pretty much all that you have said there .. we are at a major disadvantage to other teams because of this however all of the students on the team are interested in engineering and most of them have done some sort of engineering project in the past (even the freshmans) ... i have told them to not have any expectations for this season because it will be hard .. they know that engineering is a hard subject and thats why they are on the team .. for the challenge

as an update on the mentor situation .. i have found some mentors who are willing to mentor us and while some of the team disagrees with us having mentors ( some agree that we need them ) we are going to have them regardless because they are a necessity and i can only hope that within the next 2 weeks the part of the team that disagrees with mentors will come around to see why we need them and that they are not there to do everything for us .. and instead to guide us and help us when we are wrong

[Zil709]

Originally Posted by shyra1353

How do I convince my team that we need mentors ??

I'm shocked, really. I know that without our mentors, our team would be sitting on the floor of our shop, the kit of parts strewn haphazard about the room saying, "So, it's week 5. We need a robot. How 'bout that? Maybe if we put one of us in a box on wheels, we could pass that off as a robot?" Last year, our team was 5 freshmen with ZERO experience and two amazing mentors, who I realize now, don't get nearly enough credit. Without them, we would never even know how to put together a frame, let alone create a running robot.

I came into robotics with an ego that wouldn't die, convinced that I alone held the key to the universe. Okay, so maybe I wasn't that bad, but I would never ask for help. Imagine my shock when technobabble terms got thrown around a few times. Uhhmm...yeah. I took to writing things that i didn't know on my hand and I would go look them up later, refusing to 'look stupid' by asking. That lasted me about a week, and only when I asked my mentors could any real learning begin.

I suggest you just search around Chief Delphi in the Technical forum and find the hardest, most confusing question or five on the board, print them out, and hand it to your team. Tell them "If I leave, and come back in an hour, and every single person on this team understands the answer to that question and can explain it in detail to me, then I'll accept that we don't need mentors." I can almost guarantee that your team will stand staring at you, blinking ever so perplexed at the questions, and will admit defeat in about 4.3 seconds. Good luck!

(Sorry for being long-winded. I'll shut up now. )