The Roles of a Mentor - A contest

[Kims Robot]

I love this thread haha... here's my input...

Ambulance Destroyer: I don’t get to drive the robot much, as many of our demos are short, but every year at the Harris year end demo, we often have a few robots, and a few drivers, so they let me drive. With our Aim high robot, I did a super fancy pirouette, and sped full force backwards stopping an inch from the nearby ambulance. I then thought I would be funny and gun it as if the robot was running away from the ambulance… except I pulled the sticks in the wrong direction! The kids still point out un-dented ambulances to me!

Waterfetcher: at competition our chaperones usually fill water bottles for our kids, but when its been a while since they have been around, I usually run off and get it for them.

Mohawk-maker: One of our seniors (4th year of FIRST & 4th year as our driver!) decided to go with a red & black Mohawk this year, every morning of competition he walks up and hands me a bottle of hair glue, holds out his hands for my wedding/engagement rings (so I don’t get glue on them), and sits in front of me showing everyone his new rings! I also started this tradition our first year with one of our seniors by helping cut his Mohawk and stand it up at a few of our competitions.

EMT: two years ago one of our kids chest bumped a table at 2am when we finally got the robot working the night before Rally, and tripped over the table leg slicing open his ankle. I ran and got all the medical supplies (a shower curtain from the locker room and a handful of paper towels), and held his ankle for half an hour before we got to drive him to the hospital. Im also constantly removing splinters and providing bandaids

Most Needy of Safety Glasses Away from the Robot: I once tried to open a box of sodas with a boxcutter and punctured a can getting soda all in my eyes and all over the wall behind me. Three days later, I got salad dressing in my eye… a year later I got starbucks coffee in my eye…

Chauffer: I cant count the number of rides I’ve given to our kids (with their parents approval of course!)

Hex-bug Trafficker – I initiated the hexbug sales for our team, and soon found out that EVERYONE at Harris wanted one… I must have sold a thousand of them myself!! Its certainly a funny site to come home to see three GIANT cases of hexbugs on your apartment doorstep!

Receiving Department – we order a lot of stuff for our team, and since I go to every meeting, all the parts get delivered to my house. I once came home to find 12 boxes on my doorstep in the middle of January – what must our neighbors think??

Artist – I often end up painting things, from our crate to our control box to our students!

[Taylor]

Hippo-Hat-Wearer-In-Chief although the students did their best to try to destroy it before BMR.
Head Cheerleader it got to be a bit strange when our robot was being introduced, and every pair of eyes was trained on me.
Finder of Lost Tools it's amazing how much stuff turns up if you move your feet.
Delegator of Delegations This being the first year we've tried student-led subteams, I was often telling students what to tell other students to do.
Team Identity Explainer it's hard telling people why your robotics shirts say, "HIPPOS ROCK" - I think a couple people thought it was especially mean that my wife, who is due this summer with our first, was wearing one.

[JudyVandy]

Cattle-Prod-Wielder: Keeping everything moving along at a pace that makes it possible to be done by its due date. It consists of asking, reminding, and somtimes down right doing it myself. It does [b]not[b] apply to the robot itself! (I'm a NEM.)

[JaneYoung]

person with ideas/suggestions that no one gets - this could be a book.

water balloon mischief maker - I stayed up all night one night filling water balloons and putting them in tubs in my SUV til I didn't have room for any more. I told the team I couldn't come for build on Saturday a.m. ahead of time but showed up just as they were coming out of the shop and started lobbing water balloons at them. They all joined in, had a great time, and we went out to lunch. (It was awesome going over bumps in the road and hearing some of the balloons burst as I was driving. That was so cool.)

tree-climbing expert - one year the graduating seniors donated trees to create a green space behind our shop. I kept the trees in my back yard until it was time to plant. The team leader had never climbed a tree before and wanted to know what the rope was in our tree in our front yard - so he got a lesson on how to swing on a rope and how to climb a tree. I have a photo of him perched at the very top of our tree, smiling.

person who always gets lost yet always arrives on time - I always get lost which can be bad when I'm lead driver, hauling the trailer with a caravan of cars behind me. But we always arrive on time, somehow.

saver of stuff - sometimes the students make primitive mock-ups or prototypes of ideas they have and then they discard them, throw them away. Or they make a cool template and it finds its way to the trash. Or they make something out of wood or metal or whatever they're messing with, zipties... I rescue all of these from the trash and take them home for 'safe keeping'. My family never knows what is going to be on the kitchen table.

[BigJ]

Example:When writing code with the students, I am usually an example of how not to program the robot when the engineer cames and shows us what's wrong!

[Tetraman]

My nickname is Art Major. What you think that might entail?

- Annoying the tech-heavy teams with artisitc and design heavy words and processes.

[galewind]

Head Referee - No, I'm not talking about with students. I'm talking about trying to get the MENTORS not to kill one another. That's 523.4% harder than working with the students.

Administrative Lapdog - I fill out the school paperwork and play nice with district officials to main a positive image within the district. This job I don't mind as much, but being the only district employee on the team, it's not easy.

Imparter of Unconventional Wisdom - I facilitate team and parent meetings, and give 'motivational' speeches on evenings during travel regionals.

Coffee Monster - This one takes a bit of explaining. I need to have my caffeine level adjusted to just the right level or I'm someone totally different. At one end of the spectrum, I become a zombie, barely capable of communication with anyone. At the other end, I become over-communicative, having been caught on video talking to my pants (and them talking back).

I'm sure there's more, but my last job of Team Switchboard - Keeping the communication flowing, has tired me out.

[James1902]

My mother, Wendy Austin(aka Wendymom), has not posted yet so i'll post her titles for her

Team Member tracker: Was in effect mainly our first year but to this day she still knows where everybody is, at any givin time, in and out of competition

Painter of hair: Dosn't matter if your on our team, on our alliance, or just a team we've made friends with, if you want your hair painted orange and green, she's the woman for the job.

Fun time cordinater: Be it outreach or team bonding time she plans all of the "fun" events we get to go to.

Report card guard: This goes for college mentors and high school students alike, if your homework aint done your not touching the robot

Sole manager of the robotics inn: I can't even count how many people we've had sleeping in our house because they needed a place to crash during a competition

Caterur: Wendy does all the planing,shopping,and preparing of 1902s lunches at all our events.
There are many more but I think this will do for now

[ManicMechanic]

It’s been over 24 hours since the last submission, so I think “reasonable time” has passed and some awards are in order.

I’d like to start with honorable mentions for the following submissions:

Most Dangerous Job Description goes to Billfred, for his role as Crash Test Dummy (nothing personal ), which sounds almost as hazardous as refereeing.

Best Job Title – I’m not sure why Imparter of Unconventional Wisdom has such a ring to it (perhaps because it evokes shades of the Minister of Silly Walks) but Chris Gregory gets credit for this one.

The Most for the Least Award goes to Jim Wright, for his succinct submission that says it all.

Biggest Softie goes to Wendy Austin, for bedding & boarding 1902. There may be shades of “Home Invasion” at my house during robotics season, but my team always gets sent into the cold, cruel world long before the bewitching hour.

Wouldn’t we all like to take a sledge hammer to the robot at various times throughout the season? Most Fun-Sounding Job Description goes to Alan Anderson for his role as Robot Breaker.

And now for the grand prize (drum roll please….)

The prize-winning post for its many and variegated roles, including Best Story goes to Kim O’Toole Eckhard for being most likely to land a robot in the hospital.

Thank you one and all for your submissions. My word is final, no warranties expressed or implied, void where prohibited by law, yada, yada, ya…

[OScubed]

You go Kim!