My Experience with Mentoring

“ The key to being a good mentor is to help people become more of who they already are — not to make them more like you.” — Suze Orman.

We all have the experience of teaching our friends during our college days, but we never consider that as mentorship. And that is why being an official ‘mentor’ to someone seems daunting. I had a wonderful experience with mentoring at Learn IT, Girl and hence, decided to blog it out.

Learn IT, Girl is a volunteer initiative that aims to help women learn a programming language while doing an awesome project with the guidance of a mentor.

A few months after receiving the Google WTM scholarship, I was looking out for something interesting to get engaged with.
I came across LITG and applied as a mentor for Android - not sure of getting selected. I was kinda scared because this was a totally new role for me!

When I received the confirmation mail from LITG, I was extremely excited for what might come next. Yay! I was gonna be a mentor to some passionate girl like me 💃

Introduction Phase

After a few days, I was allotted a mentee named Mehak Mittal, who turned out to be really awesome!
We spent the first few meetings (virtual, of course 😅) in knowing each other. Coming up with the time slot suitable to both is very important since that is supposed to be followed for the rest of the meetings. I made sure we did good enough relation building so that we get comfortable with each other.

Project Kickstart

Next step was deciding the project. This was really cool because mentee gets to decide what she wants to create.
We brainstormed several ideas on what to make. Mehak had an idea which I heard, and then discussed the pros and cons of its implementation. I suggested some of the apps I had built and that kinda gave her an idea to build a movie app. We discussed roughly what all features it might have, and she was very excited just by the thought of it since the theme was very open-ended — one could come up with a lot of features!

Planning the Timeline

Next, we had to set up weekly tasks for the entire duration of the program. We decided to set granular tasks for the first 2 weeks and give a high level idea of the rest. This was what I did from my side:

• Provided Mehak with ample resources to learn Android. Some video lessons on Android and practising a small app helped her to get started.
• She sent me the tasks and I broke them down into little tasks. It helps a lot to have granular tasks since they’re easily achievable and testable.
• Going slowly in terms of project unfolding and not all at once, helps. I kept encouraging her constantly so that she wouldn’t feel overwhelmed with the project.
• We kept regular meetings every week. This was to discuss the progress during the week and lay out next week’s plan. Communication is crucial for both the mentor and mentee, otherwise, the project can get stuck.
• We all know app development leads to errors, and whenever she would get stuck with a bug, we would both sit and solve it together. If I wasn’t available immediately, then I would point her in the right direction where she could look further.

For me, this was the hardest part — being the mentor to help her solve the errors. Even in the workplace if something would break, I would go to my manager for help. Realizing that, ‘This is on you now, you gotta help fix it!’ , was hard. And that’s why one needs sufficient experience with the language.

Remember, you can mentor someone on something, only when you’re very comfortable with it

Challenges

As mentioned, solving the errors that came during development and that too virtually, was hard. But luckily, my mentee was smart and quick at grasping things; so she got the hints fast.
During the end of the program, I had my own Spring internship, so managing the time became tough for me. I had to work in the office, and then schedule calls with her in the night. But she being regular and proactive, didn’t require constant intervention.

Not only did we make it through the program successfully, but Mehak added more features to the app than we had decided! :D
Also, our project got featured in the edition’s best projects. I couldn’t describe my happiness enough when I received the certificate :)

Final words for the future mentees

• Clarify your goals: Explain to your mentor what you want from this program.
• Come prepared: Set up an agenda ahead of meetings and give your mentor enough time in advance to review your work.
• Keep communicating: You don’t want your mentor saying, “I haven’t heard from you”.

Final words for the future mentors

• Try to be a good listener: The more you understand your mentee, the better you’ll be to offer support in a way that makes sense to them.
• You’re there to further the mentee’s development, so don’t avoid giving critical feedback.
• Redirect the mentee instead of giving solutions: You don’t just want to be a solution provider, otherwise you will always be needed.

Learn IT, Girl is a really awesome program for women. Overall, it was an enriching experience to be a mentor as it’s easy to code yourself but tougher to make someone develop it. Also, I got a chance to connect with Mehak and we nailed it :p
So girls and guys, if you know any language and want to help someone learn it- you all can be mentors. Go for it!