Being a FIRST Alumni

[RoboChair]

Mentoring is different, powerfully so. I do not know you in a meaningful enough way to tell you how it will unfold for you, how it will change you. Only you can decide the right path to take to continue being a part of the FIRST community. But I can tell you that in your transition from student to mentor you will make mistakes, mistakes that you will learn from in order become a great mentor. It will push the boundaries of your ability to communicate with others in all senses of communication, because your focus is now on everyone around you. You are going to learn to be a teacher of skills both tangible and not, the balance of which just depends on who you are really. It will feel weird and odd but all changes do at first. But the real weird part is that being a mentor is just a label like being called an adult, there is no one point in time that you change, its a gradual shift in how you define yourself. My journey has been long and often rough to become the mentor I am today and I am a better person because of it.

I was always focused on doing when I was a student and was rather bad at properly teaching and delegating tasks. I had a rough first year of mentoring. I pretty much ended up building a separate robot from the majority of the students. The students of course fielded the robot that they put their work into, why wouldn't they. That has been my biggest mistake and I have been learning from it for 8 years now. I've learned to teach and communicate better and I'm proud of my kids, that I can see the skills I have given them and some have even surpassed me with what they do. I have learned more as a mentor than I ever have as a student because there is something about teaching that makes you critical of your own views and skills. It makes you really look hard at why you use the methods you do and pushes your to learn more. When my late wife told me in 2009 that I was becoming a teacher I brushed it off, I would never be a teacher. But she was right, I have become a teacher; something that 10 years ago I would have said was a crazy notion, but here I am.

I will be here until the end of time working my butt off to inspire and enable the ever changing group of students that pass through our doors.

Also, that DampRobot guy has some good words.

[remulasce]

Concur. A 1 year break is correct and should be customary (check my sig). Volunteering is OK.

Heck I took another year off after graduating college. You need to know where you stand before you can think of teaching people.

[runneals]

Our team doesn't allow freshmen to mentor strickly due to the fact that school should be put first.
In regards to mentoring in general, I believe that the difference between being a bad mentor and being an amazing mentor is being a leader and being a facilitator. Bad mentors are like a roller coaster where they provide constant feedback/leadership to keep the team on a perfect track. Good mentors are like the rides with the middle track and only step in and provide students guidance when asked or to prevent the students from crashing off of the general track in a facilitator type position. Personally for me I found it hard to mentor my team even being gone for 3 years after I graduated. I was offering ideas throughout build season, which I really need to work on doing better. The ideal perfect mentor would not win a Woodie Flowers award because they shouldn't be doing anything for the team. The students need to do it all.

To echo the multiple people who encouraged volunteering. This is the easiest thing you can do and commit very little time to it. Volunteer for ALL first events in your area that you can (not just FRC), as they are usually in need of volunteers and can use the help of someone experienced!