Mentoring

Mentoring is something that's been on my heart a lot in the last year. I've been blessed with numerous mentors in my life; people that I knew were absolutely awesome, even though I'd be hard pressed to give specific reasons as to why. Looking back, it's pretty easy to see what it is they all shared. It only takes two things to make anyone a mentor:

1. Being older than the person you're mentoring

-and-

2. Wanting to be involved in your mentee's life

That's it! Seriously. Being older enables you to share your experience with life circumstances that they are about to enter into. And the second one is pretty obvious - no one likes to be around someone that is only there because of guilt or obligation. People with younger brothers or sisters already have #1 taken care of, so if your relationship with your siblings seems to be strained, perhaps you should ask yourself if you want to be involved in their life...

Anyway, I spent some significant time wrestling with what this new burden should mean for my life. The desire was definitely there, strong and lasting, but the circumstances seemed rather difficult at the time - working 2 jobs (plus travel), helping out my own family, and all the typical craziness of everyday life ruled out the possibility of committing to anything serious, like Y-Buddies or Big Brothers Big Sisters. Alright God, this is more than a little frustrating... What am I supposed to do with this??

And that's when Ryan walked in.

Literally - he walked right up to my desk in the middle of the workday! He had started helping out at our company as part of a high school class requirement, and heard that I had gone to the U of M. 'Would you ever want to get together and answer a few questions about classes and applying for college and stuff like that?' Math lessons followed not long after that, as well as bonding over similar family situations, hobbies, and career goals. I've made a solid new friend - two, actually. His girlfriend comes with practically every week!

I definitely struggle some with the math assignments, and there are occasions where the timing doesn't work out or I'm too tired or he's got other things going on... it's not a perfect relationship. But that's my favorite part of mentoring - the impact you can have is so significant that your relationship doesn't need to be perfect. Sometimes it's easy for me to forget that mentoring really is making a difference. But then there are times when it couldn't be clearer, like this morning at 11 when I got the following text from Ryan:

'HOLY SHIT! I passed math!!!'

And that's all the confirmation I need.