Lessons from Mentors

[Joe G.]

One of the most important lessons I've learned from a mentor is to take what I love to do, and spread it.

I came into my high school FIRST team as a silly kid with a LOT of robotics experience. I'd spent 5 years as the head of a very successful home-grown FLL team, and about 4 as one of the few kids who seriously acted on the desire I think we all had at somepoint to build something for battlebots. Through that, I had done a TON of research, and knew more about FRC robots than many of the senior members of my team my freshman year. I was already dead-set on becoming a mechanical engineer, and had the smarts to get there.

I thought FIRST was made for students like myself.

I was dead wrong.

FIRST's target is the students who have the capacity to be how I was, crazy-into this stuff. But once you get there, you are no longer a student. You are no longer a target of FIRST, because FIRST has already inspired you. I was already at that point. And it took a lot of effort by my mentors to show me that I wasn't accomplishing anything by continuing to sit around my team playing with robots, other than taking that opportunity away from people who needed it more. But by my junior year, my mentors and friends had taught me how to teach, and more importantly, that I loved to do so. They taught me to turn building robots, into radiating love for engineering. Which is something I try to do in everything I do today, and which is critical for any student leader to do.

Mentors need to teach this.




But that hasn't been the most important lesson I've learned through FIRST. These were not taught by a mentor, so I cannot comment on how it should be taught (If you really want the full story, PM me, its not something that belongs on a public forum). However, these things MUST be conveyed to students, particularly those like me, who come into the program feeling like a robotics-hot-shot.

--This is a competition populated by robotics nerds. But knowing more than someone else about robotics does not make you a better person, and may very well be making you worse.
--Be proud, very proud, of hard work that results in the creation of something great. Be prouder of the work than the creation.
--Do not let the competition make you feel inferior because you lost when you maybe shouldn't have, or superior when you win when you maybe shouldn't. As JVN says, all that matters is what you do in the pursuit of greatness.
--The competitions, the entire competitions, are award ceremonies, where you get to find out how well you built your robot. The meat of this competition occurs during build season.
--Respect the work of others. Recognize greatness in others, just as you would celebrate greatness within your own team.
--In other words, don't cheat, and don't play dirty. Ever.
--FIRST is about much, much more than just robots. Its cliche, but the day that I truly learned what it meant was the day I went from a kid who thought he was good with robots, to an adult who plans to keep on giving back to this program, to give as many kids as I can a chance to be as lucky as I have been, be able to discover and fall in love with engineering, and maybe become a better, wiser person in the process.