The Missing Link Between Succeeding And Failing
If there is one piece of connection that builds a strong society, its mentorship. Something I’ve been continually fortunate with throughout my life, I see so many others that never have built or stumbled into one of these relationships.
Mentorship is critical to achieving rapid, sustainable growth among any skill. Whether you want to become a better version of yourself: a better writer, basketball player, creative designer — Mentorship- is a powerful catalyst for growing that facet of yourself. And I believe edTech is going to have a massive answer for this link in society.
But why have a mentor, or why be one?
It’s somewhat like reading a book where Jim Kwik says, “you can download decades of knowledge in days”, except a mentor is someone who wants to give you that knowledge, tailored for you, without an expectation to be rewarded. Mentoring someone else is a reward in itself, its one of the most primal ways of giving back, an essential piece of a meaningful life. And if someone has the courage to seek out a learning-relationship from someone with experience, the dividends will speak for themselves.
Thats why Gary Vaynerchuk continually preaches for young people to go work for someone they admire for free. Experience is the key, and unless you’ve got another way in, building that bedrock of knowledge pro bono publico is the only sure way to go.
You may say, yeah okay its important, but how do I find it?
Look here, I could not find a more holistic approach to teaching how-to-find a mentor than in this video by the Dallas based giant, Patrick Bet-David. In 14 minutes he nails down all the essentials and so I will leave that part to him. But I want to absolutely clear here, mentorship is not just for entrepreneurs, its for every single human being in any capacity, and there is a dire need for it in education.
Let me explain this:
I’m working through two degrees, by the time I was mostly through my first I realized how dead-end it was. The median income was in the 50s for jobs I’d already done (w/ no exp.) and hated while the real potential was only after masters. I needed something to bolster it with, so I picked up Economics, vastly increasing my potential for job location and salary. My first class, I met a football player who gave me what a senior teammate had sent him when he was a freshman. It was a master list of all the courses for Econ: which to skip, which are useful, which are A’s, and which are Fail-your-Ass Classes. We only get a certain amount so you have to choose wisely. To me, that master list was a golden ticket that I had encountered primarily by chance, one that most do not receive.
Hows edTech answer?
Technology has the powerful ability to decrease the amount of energy it takes to access information. The problem is in education you don’t always know who to ask. First, is an advisor, but if you watch Pat Bet-David’s video on TEA theory, these are T level mentors by design. Their base priorities are to make sure you meet the requisites to graduate. They can’t provide students with the deeper level of information that they need to make an informed decision.
Just 1 class can be a make or break outcome for a student.
I certainly don’t want to knock on the importance of counselors, they are vital to teaching students the fundamentals of designing their degrees, but they just don’t have the experience-backed knowledge to give the truly vital information. That’s where edTech can help, whether it’s as small as a Facebook group for your school or another social app. It is going to take a genuine medium that is dedicated to fostering a network of committed mentors like my friend’s senior teammate. That’s one of the major motives that drive our product development at Nxed, infusing the desire to influence the benefit of community with the forefront of technology.
In the end, having a mentor-mentee relationship is about self-awareness. As quoted in a previous post, You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with. You’re going to have to be vulnerable, meaning you‘re going to need to be comfortable saying “I do not know” and asking for guidance. For those that see the value in that, I commend you, and I hope you gather the people in your life that you need. It takes a Village to raise a child, you do your part and I’ll do mine.
Hayden Smith is the COO & Co-founder of Nxed, an ed-tech startup, who frequently writes for the The Nxed Journey. Hayden is working on a dual degree in Environmental Geosciences and Economics. At Nxed, he champions the strategic direction of the company’s output, working with both the marketing team and the development team to ensure that the ideas generated are guided by data and substantiated analysis.
Nxed is an ed-tech firm of talented creatives whom are deeply passionate about bringing universities into the 21st century by the intersection of technology and education. Stay connected with our story and leave a comment, check us out at Nxed.io.
Until then, “Keep Thinking” — Nxed team.
