Responsibilities of a Mentor

[Mark McLeod]

Originally Posted by CommanderRachek

We were the only group of students there. Every other group still there consisted entirely of adults.

Clearly, the students on these particular teams were not sufficiently inspired to be bothered to even watch their robots get completed. This is not a theoretical possibility based on conjecture. This is what I have seen with my own eyes.

I've never seen exclusive mentors-only for the entire pits at any of the regionals I've ever attended, so you do have an interesting story.

My team has been guilty of leaving mentors behind alone on occasion, but only for critical issues. Most often repairs or corrections just wait for the next day.
School policy demands that students travel as a group and they have to be back long before the pits close on Thursday. Policy also forbids me to drive students anywhere.
Sometimes we've been able to keep select students back by signing them out to their parents if their parents can stay and transport them, but unfortunately that's rarely the case for the pit crew students.

I actually had comments for the original poster, but this thread has been hijacked so far off course (on a path the OP specifically requested we not take) that they won't make any sense now...

Please just stop being nasty to one another.

BTW: Jane, the official Kickoff transcript is at: http://robotics.nasa.gov/events/first/08transcript.php