Like so many people here on ChiefDelphi, I am incredibly excited for build season to begin. As a college student, I will be going home for holiday and will be able to contribute to my team for the first three weeks before having to return to school. At which time, I will be too far away and will not have enough time to contribute further. That said, what are the best things I can do for my team as a first time mentor? I come from a young team (this will be the third year we have existed). Most of our members will be in their first or second year of FRC. I want to help them be as successful as possible. Thanks for the help!
Get as many sponsors and mentors as you humanly can. It will make things a lot easier for your team to do well, as well as establish your team as a community figure, paving the way for successful Chairman’s award entries.
If this is your first year at college, you can probably best serve your team by stepping back and focusing on school. You’ll be much more effective as a mentor a year later, when you’ve had some time to find your new groove as a college student. It also helps a lot to have a clean separation between student and mentor roles.
If you must contribute something, try giving the one thing you definitely have more of than they do: FRC experience. Make checklists, and try to explain in writing why each item is important.
This may seem simple, but it is actually quite difficult to do: remember that you are no longer a high school student, and that you are now a mentor.
What does this mean? It depends on your team. It probably means you will be held to a higher standard than the students with regard to behavior and expectations. It also probably means that if there’s any robot prototyping/building going on, you will be expected to be a role model with regard to safety.
You may also be expected to take a back seat to the high school students in some aspects of the team, perhaps brainstorming, design or manufacture. I cannot speak for your team, but since you are familiar with them, I will let you judge for yourself. Remember, this is not your “fifth year” as a high school student. You had your time, and your experience with the team changed you: don’t take that away from another student, whether on purpose or by accident.
Beyond that, try to impart your knowledge to the other students. You are a veteran member of the team, which means, whether you know it or not, the other students look up to you to some degree. Teach them what you know about whatever you specialty on the team was; mechanical design, CAD, programming, marketing, whatever it is, your team will be better off if you leave a legacy greater than yourself behind.
Most importantly, talk to your other mentors. See what their plans are and see what they want you to do. The journey of becoming a mentor normally begins by learning from other, more seasoned mentors. Also, they will be there after you have gone back to school, and fitting into their plans will make their lives easier.
This
I have had a bunch of alumni come back as “mentors”. They are basically super seniors because they never realized they aren’t students any more.
You’ve got years to be a mentor but unless you’re going to spend a long time in school, you’re limited in those experiences. FIRST will still be here when you get out.
Returning as a college student to your old team puts you in what can be an uncomfortable situation. You may know many students who won’t see you as an adult and many of the adults still see you as a student.
We have a a number of college alumni who come in for the kick off weekend to celebrate the new season and brainstorm. Those that have some time will often pitch in and help build field elements. Many of these students go to colleges/universities involved with FIRST so they go back to school and work with their local teams in some capacity.
College > FIRST, just like grades > FIRST for a high school student.
As a relatively recent alumni-turned-mentor for my team, I can safely say that there is validity to every point that has been made so far. I should warn you now that this is a long post–I have lots to say on this subject! :yikes:
Our team has a large number of graduated students that have come back to mentor, and it’s been my experience that it takes about a year for most of them to grow accustomed to the change and really shine in their new roles. That goes not only for the mentor in question, but for the rest of the team, who has to grow accustomed to seeing/working with them in a mentor role.
I waited a year after graduating to come back to my team, and I’m really glad I did. If you come back too early, all the students on the team will still remember you as a student and treat you as such. This is not constructive to anyone, since it robs them of possible lessons you could teach, and it contributes to the problem that other adults may have in seeing you as an equal(which is essential if you want to do your team the most good). In my case, there were several students a year younger than myself whom I had not gotten along with while we were students together–if that is at all the case for you, then returning to your team prematurely will do it more harm than good.
This is not to say that you should stop helping your team entirely–on my year off, I drew up lesson plans and planned out a summer workshop for our new members the next year. That idea turned out to be a huge help to my team–we were losing a lot of veteran members that year, and we had next to no student leads lined up for the next year. I was also with them for Kickoff and contributed some during our initial brainstorming sessions. A serious medical issue prevented me from participating during competition season that year, but I would have come if I could have, and provided advice if asked.
Another way that you can always help your team is to keep your eye out for FRC updates, useful CD posts, videos from other teams, etc. This is something you can do even after you get back to college: obsessively check the FRC Blog, CD, and other teams’ websites. You never know when you might pick up some useful technique, idea or rule change that your team could benefit from. I can’t even begin to count how many little changes we’ve implemented in the past few years simply because our students and mentors do this every day.
Whether or not you decide to become a fully-active mentor this season, there’s one major point that you must keep in mind if you want to be a good mentor:
Do not try to force your way into this position. You want your team to come to respect you as a mentor on their own terms, and that process cannot be rushed.
If you don’t follow that piece of advice, you’ll end up with mentors who dislike you and students who resent you–I’ve seen it happen many times on my own team.
All that said, I would suggest that you take a more backseat role this season. Look around at the dynamics of your team–I promise you that being in a mentor position will open your eyes to a lot of things about your team that you didn’t know! Look at how the students interact with the mentors, and how the mentors interact with each other. Try to see if there’s something your team can improve on–if you were in charge, what would you try to change for the better? See if there are any holes that need filling. For example, is your team short on mentors in one particular area? If so, now might be a good time to start learning about that area, and see how you can help out there. Becoming a mentor is a lot like becoming an active student member: you have to look around and find your niche–whatever area where you can be the most helpful.
Another thing you definitely want to do is find a more senior mentor that you can learn from–one of the best things about this program is that everyone is always learning, all the time. Mentors are no exception. Find an adult on your team whom you admire, and can seek to emulate as a mentor yourself.
You mentioned that most of your students are newer members this year–maybe you could hold a how-to session or two during winter break to help start them off on the right path? What about off-season events and community involvement? When I came back, that was the first thing I worked on improving for my team. Look at how the students interact with one another–are they a tight-knit group that could truly be called a team, or is there some friction between members? Try getting a few mentors together to organize some kind of team social event–a cook-out, dodgeball game, LAN party, whatever.
Something else to consider: You are in a unique position on your team at this point. You have enough knowledge and experience to be considered a mentor, but you are young enough to the point that the students can relate to you(and vice versa) in a way that isn’t usually possible with some older mentors/teachers. If you handle this correctly, it will allow you to establish a great rapport with the students–they’ll come to respect you, not only as a mentor, but as a friend that understands them as people. You can use this to work out all kinds of interpersonal conflicts, and after awhile, you’ll be able to teach them on a level that you wouldn’t have thought possible.
I’m not going to lie–the first year, the transition year, will be the worst. But if you can handle it with patience and maturity, you’ll end up in the best place it’s possible to be in on an FRC team. It’s like a little Christmas each time a student comes to you with a question, and I can’t even describe the feeling you get when you see kids succeed because of YOUR efforts 
I came back from University to my high school team (1075). I had competed in Grade 10 and 11 (2003/2004), and my team skipped my Grade 12 year (2005) for financial reasons.
I was active with 1075 continuing all the way through until 2012. I would come back from university and industry to continue helping out. I lived in the same area, so it wasn’t a huge deal.
In late 2012, I moved about an hour’s drive away, and a new team, 4343, had been formed in the town where I work during the 2012 season.
It wasn’t until I left 1075 to move to 4343 for the 2013 season that I stopped being seen as one of these “super-seniors”. 4343 was happy to have me and my ~10 years of FRC experience, and many questions related to FRC strategy and best practices get directed to me.
I suspect that my experience is mirrored by many of the alumni-gone-mentor folks out there. I suspect many of us have needed to LEAVE the team we are alumni of in order to shake that “super-senior” image.
Be there to impart wisdom when they need it and you can easily give it. Don’t try to be over-active or super involved when you simply cannot be. Your first year in college shouldn’t be spent being a FIRST “mentor” because being a mentor isn’t a job you find yourself falling into upon coincidence of not being a high school student anymore, it’s a title you learn to respect and work to earn.
If you have to do anything, volunteer! Events are the second most fun things in FIRST (only behind the inside jokes on your team) and hey always need volunteers who understand the importance of the event and have a feel for how the event should run. Try seeing if there’s a team near your college that you can not necessarily “mentor” either, but work with and build on.
You probably have mentors on your team from when you were in high school that are still there. Try to learn by following their example before you yourself dive into it. The mentors that still work with my high school team are my real-life mentors in some ways as well.