Attn: Present & Future College Students, Think carefully before you mentor

[Katie Reynolds]

Originally Posted by KenWittlief

If you do decide to be a mentor while you are in college then accept the fact that you will not play a key role on the team.

Wrong. My team (857) is comprised of one high school teacher, 7 college students and 17 high school students. As far as "engineers" go, the college students are all 857 has. We're supported by GM, Ford and DCX through Michigan Tech, yet have no professionals - in any capacity - to help us out. College mentors are key on 857 because without them, there would be one high school physics teacher and a bunch of high school students. Houghton doesn't have the engineering industry (and small businesses simply aren't interested - yet, we're working on it) to help us.

That said, DJ is 100% correct. I took a year off from FIRST - mostly because I was in the process of switching schools at semester last year - thinking, "Hey, I'll have some time to get my act together and then I can mentor." It was a nice thought, but my semester GPA will reflect that my act - as far as school is concerned - was far from together. While mentoring a team is a phenominal, rewarding experience, college is far too expensive to come out saying, "Well, I graduated with a 2.5 GPA ... but I mentored a FIRST team!"