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

[kapolavery]

AMEN
yea im a graduating senior.. and the juniors and other advisors are asking whos gonna come back..

its pressuring to come back bc you wanna instill that enthusiasm you had into those underclassmen who are gonna take over the team.

[Michael Corsetto]

Let me start off by saying I think it's really important to step back your freshman year. College is a completely new experience and don't count out everything it has to offer until you've given it a good hard look. You might find a particular group or club that takes your interest, other than FIRST

My Freshman year was one of the best years of my life, and I didn't work in a shop all build season. Didn't scour over the rules. Didn't check CD every five minutes. I did something different, and had a blast.

This sophomore year has been a completely different story. I got in contact with the local FIRST team and started going to their weekly meetings in the fall. It was a lot of fun just getting acquainted with a new team that had such a different student group than my old team had. After doing some (minimal) training and (trying) to get sponsors, the build season rolled around.

This is the only part I regret. I only missed one meeting. The whole 6 weeks. The team met 4 days a week, and I was there every time. Luckily my grades didn't drop, I managed to hold a 3.5, but a lot of the stuff I enjoyed freshman year seemed to drift away. Simply put, I was too involved, and while the robot might have been ever so slightly better because of it, I was not.

I was also a member of the regional planning committee for the Davis regional. If this sounds like the straw that breaks the camels back, it surprisingly was not. I had a great time tele-conferencing in once a month, and then helping the event run smoothly last week. I was the regionals media contact, and was interviewed by at least 10 different news outlets. It was a blast! The low time commitment up to the date of the regional was great for my schedule, and I was still able to play an important role for the event.

After this year's competition has ended, I have a new focus, a goal you could say. I only want to come in once a week during build season next year. My goal is to transfer I as much of my experience to these kids as possible in the next 9 months, so they'll be on autopilot during the build season, with the skills required to get the job done. Its gonna be tough, but in some ways I view these 9 months as my new build season, building up the next generation of engineers... [/cheesy]

[ComradeNikolai]

I'm going to college next year after two years in FIRST. I currently plan on mentoring the team, since I played a large part in this season and I don't know who we'll have on the team next year. I hope I can train some people over the summer to do the jobs I performed this year, and I'm confident in the resiliency of the team, which is why I'm going to mentor over the summer and over my Christmas break, then go to the Saturday portion of the Buckeye regional -- mentoring won't interfere with my class work, as much as I want it to.

[JaneYoung]

Originally Posted by kapolavery

AMEN
yea im a graduating senior.. and the juniors and other advisors are asking whos gonna come back..

its pressuring to come back bc you wanna instill that enthusiasm you had into those underclassmen who are gonna take over the team.

You have already instilled enthusiasm in the underclassmen who will take over the leadership and direction of the team. The team will find a way and adjust to change. You have done your job as a student leader.

The students who graduate and move on into life after high school, take on a new role and that is as a role model of possibilities, opportunities, and facing new challenges. It is a shift away from the role as a senior on the team, sometimes very subtle but very powerful.

[Enigma's puzzle]

I also am coming from a different place than a lot of you. I am attending community college, to save money by living at home. This particular community college has very little to do Extra extracurricular.

I have started helping my old first team but because i have a job that works almost weeknight i cannot help much but on the weekends or occasionally if i get out early i will go help. Instead i have found a different role on the team that many of the mentors who work a regular first shift day cannot do. I have been picking up materials and parts, and also occasionally dropping them off to get machining. This has brought me back and helping my team in a new and in some cases more important way.

The fact is I have very little actual designing and building experience that cannot be provided to the team by another mentor. (although i would take extensive time absorbing other teams designs at competition, so i can bring back ideas from other teams from previous years, that other mentors cannot recall) But instead i took the one difference that i had over the other mentors, and am using it to provide for the team in a completely different way than our team has ever had.

[Bomberofdoom]

While in the army and college I'll do my best to find a nearby team and drop by a couple of times to help. I'm thinking that I will be more of a programming/team&project mangment mentor, because I believe those are the areas I touched most in FIRST and will probablly continue in college.
Oh, and training the drive-team too.

First year in the army I probablly won't have a lot of free time so I'll do volunteering work for the competition (tech support, field reset, or if given, referee).