which is better as a student or mentor....

[Beth Sweet]

In a phrase: both, they're just different

When you're a student, the magic of FIRST is the scene and the people and the grandeur and the awards and the robots and the everything. Winning an award for your efforts puts you on cloud 9.

When you're a mentor, the happy parts are watching your students experience that, and other life successes even after they graduate. Yes, the winning and performing well is cool, but the best part as a mentor, at least to me, is seeing my kids (they hate it when I call them that) enjoying themselves and doing well.

(I was a student on HOT for 2 years and have been a mentor on the Desperate Penguins for the last 5)

Interesting thread topic BTW...

[kapolavery]

Originally Posted by Beth Sweet

Interesting thread topic BTW...

yea well i was thinking about it.. bc as a senior all the things you want to accomplish before your out of HS and then you get so close yet in the end its cut short...

plus our school is fairly new to FIRST.. only our second year. so i guess we still have room to grow and as a possible mentor, ill be able to share with them my experiences and help them grow..

[Fe_Will]

I agree with Beth, mentoring is a whole new ball of wax. As a student I saw awards in regard to my personal accomplishment. Being a mentor gives you a wider view of the team's accomplishment not just individual's.

It is a bit more sentimental when you mentor the team you were a part of as a student, I guess... (2 years student / 4 years mentor 955)

[Adama]

This year the team I am a alum and mentor of won the Industrial Design award. As a mentor it means a lot knowing you showed the students a very loose concept of a robot and got to watch the students evolve it into an award winning design.

I can say that it feels good knowing the founding members (my self included) hard work has laid a foundation for a team that assuming we retain the same level of parent and teacher involvement we have now, will rarely have a bad year. In prior years/teams those same founding members had been through a lot of bad robots, organization and horrific school politics. Hopefully, the students on the team now will never have to see or be part of that kind of un-fun and un-FIRST like experience.

So in general I would have to say its just different.

[ComradeNikolai]

I don't have the perspective of being a mentor (yet!), but I will share what I can:

The best feeling I've had in my time in FIRST was when I realized that I, as a driver, had had a significant role in making us the third seeded team at the Pittsburgh regional.

Overall, I think our students had the "jumping for joy, flying high in the sky" kind of joy, as well as our coach (he was terribly excited when we won a match which seemed heavily weighted to the other alliance, as well as when we had the highest scoring match at the regional), whereas our mentors have more of a look of appreciate, satisfaction and awe.

[Billfred]

Success is success. Every time any of my teams has met with a big success, student and mentor alike light up with excitement. (Now, what we call a "big success" is a situational thing...but the point remains.)

[popnbrown]

Originally Posted by kapolavery

yea well i was thinking about it.. bc as a senior all the things you want to accomplish before your out of HS and then you get so close yet in the end its cut short...

plus our school is fairly new to FIRST.. only our second year. so i guess we still have room to grow and as a possible mentor, ill be able to share with them my experiences and help them grow..

omg...great topic. But I feel the exact same way, I had high expectations this year (slightly my fault) and was dissapointed when we didn't do as well as I had hoped, and now my FIRST experience as a student is gone. After thinking about this the week after my last regional, I came to a conclusion that my team (Team 1403, Cougar Robotics) made me who I am and FIRST's values are my values. Therefore, what I do as a student or a mentor is for my team and a team victory would be a victory of my own. Of course, eventually when I'm a mentor I will be proud of the work the students have done, like now I am proud of all that my younger teammates have accomplished and what I know they will accomplish in the future.

I'm really sad that I'll be going away however, the team has been like a second family to me, all the mentors teammates and even some of the parents. I guess the time comes when I have to start another FIRST team..

[kapolavery]

Originally Posted by popnbrown

After thinking about this the week after my last regional, I came to a conclusion that my team (Team 1403, Cougar Robotics) made me who I am and FIRST's values are my values. Therefore, what I do as a student or a mentor is for my team and a team victory would be a victory of my own. Of course, eventually when I'm a mentor I will be proud of the work the students have done, like now I am proud of all that my younger teammates have accomplished and what I know they will accomplish in the future.

yea thats what i like about FIRST..it makes you want to keep on improving and doing better..and in the process you learn a whole new set of values that you can take anywhere and for sure it'll make it easier to succeed in whatever you intend to do..
it doesnt matter whether you win or lose.

being the first FIRST team for my school is pretty epic. so in a way its rewarding to know that if in later years my team reaches any form of success, its rewarding to know that you helped and shared in setting the foundation for the new kids to build on.. and the only way to go is up.

[Molten]

Definitely the mentor.

If your a student, your proud because you helped build an award winning robot. If your a mentor, your proud because you helped build an award winning team. Don't get me wrong. I loved building the robots and still love an engineering challenge, but building a person's future is so much more rewarding.

Note: I in know way believe that I am responsible for a student's success. Their success is their success. I am just happy to be there and teach them anything and everything I can. A year where the students learn a lot and win nothing is more rewarding than a year where the team does well and doesn't learn much.

[kapolavery]

Originally Posted by Molten

A year where the students learn a lot and win nothing is more rewarding than a year where the team does well and doesn't learn much.

i like that! that just might be my memorable saying from now on..

[595294001]

I think that the feeling of joy you get after winning an award is based not on your position on the team, but rather the number of hours and the amount of passion you put into the 'bot. The more effort you put in the better you feel about it being validated, which does lean it towards students because they get the chance to do the work, while mentors just help. But in the end, if you work hard, no matter what part of the team you are, it will feel great.

[chrisstruttmann]

Being a student is definitely more fun.

I was a student on Team Voltage for four years, and now I'm back as a mentor. Voltage has a program called "Mentors-in-training" and that's basically created for college students that want to mentor. We do this because the team wants to be able to monitor college student's grades to ensure they're not slipping or become overly dedicated. I'm one such person...

anyways...

The whole experience has made me a 100% better person and totally changed me (as cliche as that may sound). When I started FIRST I wasn't a good student, I wasn't motivated, and I knew what I wanted to do but didn't know anything about how to achieve the goals.

All of that is great but there's still one experience that was the culmination of it all...

When I was a student we won our first ever Championship award for controls in 2007; I was one of the people that got to sit in the awards section to go get it. I will never ever forget when the CEO of Rockwell Automation said "This team makes control look easy..." One of the reasons we got the award (not undercutting the team, EVERYONE has a hand in our robots) was because of our amazing software that had an awesome autonomous that could react no matter what the orientation of the rack and it made control for the drivers really easy (hence the easy button that would score automatically). I was the only person on the software team that year; the mentor that taught me and I are now good friends, the whole experience was just AWESOME.

You don't get those experiences as a mentor, however, you DO get to help the students that are younger than you build the pieces to have those experiences. It's very rewarding but in a different way.

--Chris Struttmann
Voltage386 (Charge UP!)