"Official" Mentor Entry #1

I really hate being so sick - it is hard to focus on one thought for more than a moment. This will be a short entry - just enough to build off of later.

I have found my mentee at the school where I worked (several years ago). I met with her prior to FETC and we got to know each other and talked about what she would like to do in the next few months. We were to meet again this Tuesday, but some class plans interfered at the last minute, so we will be meeting this Saturday at a local cafe.

This will be an interesting journey as she is a bright, vivacious, gregarious young woman with a very troubled history. Her over-arching goal is to graduate by May. This mentoring course, of course, ends in April - but there are more immediate goals which I can track for the purposes of this course (passing the written test for her driver's license, earning specific course credits, working with her to pursue information about her career interests, etc.). I have committed to stick with her until May - or until she completes all the work to graduate (whichever comes first). I felt it was very important to establish that I would not walk away from her when my own course work is complete - so there will be some overlap. I have the distinct feeling that as we work together, new intentions (I do like that word better than "goal") will make themselves known. I have the feeling that she is still holding back a bit, waiting to see if she can trust me. I think perhaps I am doing that as well - postponing our meeting this week might very well have been unavoidable - but this early on it is still hard to tell.

One thing that is obvious - I made the right choice in going outside the workplace for my "official" mentoring project. Thinking about mentoring and working on my own mentoring skills has had a very positive impact on my professional work relationships so far. I believe that if I had tried to officially mentor a colleague, this would not have been the case - as it would have meant singling out one person on the team and could have created additional tension with other team members as well as put undo pressure on the person I asked to be a mentee.