Mentor: Be or not to be
Do ever you thought about mentoring? Not only being mentored by somebody but also about to be a mentor for someone? Do ever you thought, what people could get from been mentor?
Prologue
The long time ago, before becoming a developer, I used to do sports. I dedicated the biggest part of my life to fencing. My four last years as a competitor I was working hard struggling to make one interesting and amazing trick, but how hard and long I’ve worked I didn’t manage to do that.
After I quit competing I’ve moved to the USA (on the term of 6 months) to be a fencing coach at San-Francisco. I was coaching kids and sometimes adults. I had one small group of kids whose parents were also from Ukraine (they moved to the USA after the Soviet Union broke apart), so the language barrier was a bit smaller than with others. And there was one guy, Mitchell, to whom I (I don’t know why I decided to do that) decided to show that tricky thing I’ve never done by myself.
I’ve explained what he supposed to do, he listened to me for two minutes and then you know what? That 10 years old Man(yes, from the Capital letter and bold font) did that. From the first try, he totally did that!!!
I’ve memorized that day for whole my life and I still feeling: the feel of the proud, happiness and satisfaction.
Main part
I didn’t know how truthful was the next, but our coaches told us, that in Italy, in one of the strongest fencing countries, the Top fencers sometimes are coaching others. And after the situation in SFFC I’ve realized why.
When you are trying to teach something, to explain something to somebody, you start looking for the things from the another point of view.
Every time you are revising your knowledge and things you used to accept as ‘it is so simply because it is so’. And very often can happen that during a process of your professional evolution (in fact does not matter what kind of profession you belong to), you were missing some obvious details which could make your present life as the established professional much easier. The most trivial question can open your eyes on some hidden secrets which were escaping from your attention just because there were dozens and dozens of the different and the more interesting things that seemed more important at that time.
So I’m deeply convinced, that we should not only not to avoid the chance to be the mentor for somebody but every time to try to search the possibility to help somebody, to support with a word, example or event with playing a role of Duck if necessary. Be humble and patient, when somebody is asking the stupid question. Don’t forget, that some time ago you also were the newbies and asked questions which could seem awful for somebody except you.
Do not accept this process as the wasting of the time. Think about this as investing in yourself, because you never know when you will find out that you was blind.
Epilogue
After Mitchell (the Man from the prologue part) did that feint, I decided to try it by myself. And you know what? I’ve done that crap from my first try… The four years of my life I threw as peas on the wall. Four years… And all I was needed to do just explain those feint to somebody.
Think about this.
And remember: repetition — the mother of learning.
