FAHA: No Mentors

[Bharat Nain]

Mentor support on teams is an invaluable resource. Some teams strive for mentors but don't have many. What advice can you offer this FIRST-A-HOLIC?

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There have been a number of posts in the FAHA Mailbox on mentors or parents who have been too aggressive in helping teams to the point that the students' efforts are often marginalized. But, what advice do you have to give to teams who suffer problems on the opposite end of the spectrum: those who have little help from mentors, or no mentors at all?

For some background on my team's particular situation: we are one of those teams without mentors at all. We may occasionally get some parent help, but never related to engineering. For the vast majority of the time, our students work alone without adults around. For us, the downsides have been made clear: our room is often messy, and we struggle every day to get dinner and drive out to Home Depot/OSH to buy things with our own money. On the other hand, we have actually been maintaining ourselves fairly well. We are proud of the robot we have built this year, and think it will be competitive. We have strong relationships with a number of sponsors, and have, by ourselves, fundraised a comfortable budget. No one has been seriously hurt through working with metal, power tools, electronics, etc, and we have first aid ready in our room. The older members of the team have, year after year, organized numerous events to train younger members and pass down knowledge.

Our team has not always been like this: there was a time in our history when there were many parents helping out the team, but they have since graduated away with their students. My fear is that the younger members of our team, who have only ever experienced our team without mentors, will come to see that as tradition, or something to be proud of.

We have tried hard to fix the situation. We had written a letter to be distributed in our school's newsletter. We had a parent meeting before the season started, where we asked them all if any were interested in mentoring or helping us out. We collected all their contact information, and sent out more than one email asking for parents interested in being mentors, or if any of those parents knew someone else interested in being a mentor. We had asked many faculty members at our school, as well, and they had all rejected the offer (usually because they were too busy).

We are out of ideas. Does anyone out there have any suggestions for our team, or for the other teams out there who face similar problems?

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FIRST-a-holic Anonymous mailbox is a place to share your concern and frustration about your FIRST experience anonymously. It is the perfect place if you just want someone to listen, or ask for advice when you don’t know what to do. Submit your letters today at the FIRST-a-holic anonymous mailbox forum. If you wish to respond to this thread anonymously, please PM Beth or Bharat with your response and thread title.

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