College student mentors

[Akash Rastogi]

Originally Posted by monkeymel1003

There are two problems with the way our team is set up that doesn't allow this:

1. The team is very small, and half of us are graduating this year.

2. The head mentors of the team have set it up so that students do not select what they do to help the team until very late in the year (it can be kickoff before a student will know what they are doing).

Considering we are comprised of 3 schools, even though there are few people, it's fairly hard to stay organized sometimes.

Hate to say it, but my honest opinion would be to let your team ride it out for at least one season. Team's don't grow all that much unless you let them try themselves. Students grow into taking on responsibilities to the best of their ability, in time. Quite a few of the graduates from our team last year thought that the 09 team would be quite a disaster because 17 seniors graduated. The result of this season was quite the contrary, we built one of our most reliable robots yet and had the most organized team we've had yet.

Basically, don't underestimate what the kids can grow into when given the chance. A lot of them might surprise you. If you can, give all of them simple rundowns of your responsibilities, that way you won't have to worry about who gets what job.*

*By the way, that whole thing about the kids not being able to pick what they want....now that's a whole 'nother story. I could see the situation of a small team having the students multitasking, but having them do assigned sub-teams; seems kinda dumb to be honest.