Don’t Have a Mentor? Be an Anteambulo.

Mentoring seems to everywhere these days, in the workplace, in schools, in athletics, in civic outreach programs — everywhere. As a matter of fact, I recently taught a mentoring class for the last two years, so I’ve had quite a bit of time and reason to consider the notion that mentoring is a panacea for on-boarding and growing newcomers to virtually any group or team. But I’m going to share a little secret — even as I was teaching and supporting an undergraduate course in mentoring where upperclassmen gladly and graciously gave their time and energy to mentor incoming freshmen, there was something about the whole thing that wasn’t quite gelling with me.

Part of my slight but real hesitation was that, honestly, as an undergraduate, I wouldn’t have volunteered to be on either end of the mentoring equation. As an upperclassman I was too busy to help freshmen get adjusted. As a freshman, I would have preferred to roll around in fire ants instead of admitting that I was clueless. I took pride in struggling along on my own to figure things out rather than depend on others for help. I get that on some level all I have identified is my own personal preference — which has pros and cons. But my discomfort with the notion of mentoring in general lead me to think, REALLY THINK, about the idea of mentoring; to consider it not just through my own eyes but from a more systematic and holistic…