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

Now that the championships have past, I decided I want to share a story with everyone. The school years are winding down, graduating high school students are pumped up from their nationals experience are getting ready to go to college. First thought in their minds (most of the time) is that they want to listen to Dean and go get a team started at their college or university or joining one that is currently already in place.

Just a fair warning from someone who went through this first hand. Although it is very tempting, think carefully before you join. Mentoring is a serious commitment as you know. Many of your mentors spend hours and hours during the week sharing their knowledge with you. Jumping in that role right away could be overwhelming especially with college.

If you haven't figured it out yet, you soon will, college isn't high school. There are so many more factors involved. Most students live on their own, you have more freedom, the classes are more demanding, you have to know how to study. Temptations are there that weren't when you were in high school. With all this in mind, it might be a good idea to not be involved with a team your freshman year of college.

Why am I wasting my time making this point? Because, I am a victim of this. After a semester of mentoring, I ended up on Academic Probation and having to retake 2 classes that I took during the spring semester because I let mentoring take priority over class. I have spoken to many fellow college students who have ended up in a similar situation after mentoring.

Guess what? As much as you want it to be, it isn't. Getting that degree is the reason for going to college. Failing out of school because you mentored isn't really a good reason. In fact, there aren't many good reasons for failing out of school.

Don't get me wrong, there are many college mentors out there that can handle the workload. In fact, a friend of mine graduated from Purdue and took 21 credit hours one semester in addition to mentoring and still finished the semester with a better than 3.0 GPA. Some people can handle mentoring and class. I won't deny that.

So now that you've spent time reading and thinking about this, you yourself need to spend the time from when you finish reading this until the fall starts and teams have callout meetings thinking, "Am I ready to commit to something so time consuming? Do I have the work ethic, time management skills, and study skills to be able to handle this?"

If you are 110% sure you think you can handle mentoring and school, more power to you. If you have any doubt in your mind, take a year off. Volunteer at a local regional or championships, go to an off season event, and keep in contact with the numerous friends that you make through this organization. Mentoring is not worth failing out of college. As Ken Patton of the Huskie Brigade once told me, "Robotics will still be here after college. Just make sure you get that degree." Those words didn't mean much to me right away, but a few months down the road, they became very important to me and I am still living by them. My bad academic experience during my year of mentoring is most of the reason for my burnout and my hiatus from FIRST. Once I get that degree, so many options open up, and it will be a much easier way to transition myself back into FIRST.

Think about what I said. It could make a difference.

D.J. Fluck
Purdue University, Class of 2008