Why do teams voluntarily do FIRST without adult technical mentors?

[RbtGal1351]

Originally Posted by sanddrag

One interesting thing that was said at our end of the season team meeting (to evaluate the goods and the bads was this). Our main teacher/mentor said to the students (not word for word, but approximately) "In your surveys, you all complained that the mentors did too much of the work. Well, before you ever think about accusing us of that again, you better not be sitting in the corner chatting and playing games when there is a robot to be built" It didn't really come off all that harsh but that was the best I could remember what was said.

Note: I'm a student and am entering my 3rd year in FIRST. I was a founding member on our team, 1351.

Wow, I completely agree with that. That happens in our lab a lot, but we're one of the teams that airs on the side of less-mentor-interaction. In the beginning, this was mostly because we didn't have very many mentors; but now not all of us are willing to be mentored. (This poses another problem for mentors.) Honestly, I wasn't too open to being mentored, especially after having almost no help the previous year.
...leading to my point...
I'm not sure that teams without so many mentors realize that they could get mentors or the advantages mentors would bring. They don't necessarily realize that they aren't doing things the best way, that there is another way to approach their current problem.

For example (this is a classic 1351 story), our rookie year (2004), we were putting together our gearboxes. We just couldn't seem to get them together right, we'd accidentally put the bolts in the wrong direction, we put the sprocket on backwards, the spacing was off, etc. So we'd take them apart, and each time, we had to take the key out of the axle. And this took us almost forever, because we were sitting there with a hammer, screwdriver and some pliers. About 2-3 hours after we started the job (for the sixth time at least, and I'm not exaggerating), one of our mentors walked in, saw what we were doing, and decided to help (we needed it...). He walked over to our vice, put the keys in the vice, lifted up on the axles, and finished the job in less than 30 seconds. We were all astonished, and stood there stunned for the next couple minutes.

We had no idea there was an easier way to accomplish that; we just assumed that we were doing it correctly, and that there wasn't a better or easier or faster way. However, we will never forget this lesson.
Hopefully, though, we've learned that there may always be a better, more efficient method to approach a problem--and we don't have to figure everything out ourselves. And being taught something rather than figuring it out yourself doesn't mean that you won't learn and remember it.


However, I am opposed to the teams who have entire groups of mentors and adults doing work for them, (e.g. scouting at regionals), especially when they aren't teaching a student what they are doing. I believe the mentors are there to teach us what we need to do to accomplish a goal, how to go about it, and what is important in running a team. I don't believe that they are there to do those things for us.
(An exception could be an extremely small team, where there simply aren't enough students to do all the work, so long as they are still learning what the mentors are doing, and the students are aware that the adults took care of task xyz for them.)


One thing that's up to debate for me and my team is who should be running the organization and the managing of the team -- students or adults?
The students need to learn how to run a team; that is a major part of FIRST. However, it is definately not something you can easily learn on your own. This coincides with all the other threads on how your team is organized, so please don't just talk about that; but perhaps the leadership positions should be occupied by student(s), with an almost-personal mentor to directly help the student-leader out.


Thanks Andy, this needed to be addressed.
~Stephanie
Team 1351

ps- sorry about the long post