Why do teams voluntarily do FIRST without adult technical mentors?

[Al Skierkiewicz]

Originally Posted by Chaos204

I have been told, the best way to learn is to learn through mistakes.

1. Besides Robotics my other life is what we call in our school sound and light(we are the people in the back of the theater balancing the Mic's and programing the lights) my "mentor" allows us (the students) to do the balancing of the Mic's so we develop the hearing that allows us to hear subtle rings in the voices before the audience does. This prepares us to be the mentors someday and be able to work without him guiding us every second.
which brings me to #2


Not only do engineer teams loose the trial/error aspect they most likely loose the pride i feel when i see our creation out there on the field.
everybody on the team knows how everything works and what it took to get it there in the first place. it's our "Blood Sweat and Tears" out there on the field.

Jordan,
I have said my piece earlier in this thread but I had to jump in and give a little bit more.
The best way to learn is not through mistakes. It is far better ( and more efficient) to learn through other's mistakes and that's what mentors are doing. They are providing the benefit of their experience and passing it on to the students. If you were to exist just on trial and error without any benefit of past experience you could "wander around in the desert" forever and never come up with the solution. Man has made it this far by not reinventing the wheel every time a new idea comes into his head.
On the subject of mic mixing and feedback prevention, a mentor who lets you "do it yourself" so that you can hear the subtleties leading to feedback has fallen far short of a very complex discussion on the subject. Things that affect feedback are not only mix related but include the acoustics of the hall, mic selection, room equalization and a little thing known as NOM. There are spaces in existence that can never be corrected and there are mic that can be used in a great acoustic space that cannot be "mixed" to sound good or guarantee no feedback. As a student of this art for a very long time, I can tell you that I am still learning as are most of my peers, because sound science is still in it's infancy.
Finally, all teams take pride in their robot, but it is easy to become down heartened when you think you have done everything correctly and the robot still does not act or react as you think. Over the years, many teams without engineer mentors have asked for my help at competitions. They did have most of the problems solved but missed one or two minor points in design or implementation. Oh, if an engineer had just spent one or two hours with that team before competition, their experience could have been more positive. (for instance, when the FIRST tranny came out, it was very sensitive to friction caused by misalignment of gears and shafts) This advice did not need to come from an engineer, just someone with the experience to identify the problem.