A word about mentoring ...
Anshul Kundaje
Hey All,
I had a few thoughts about the mentoring program. Comments are welcome!
I wanted to discuss the relative merits of a 1-1 mentoring system vs many-1 mentoring system.
I think a many-1 mentoring system (many mentors -> 1 student) is a good starting point for a student, primarily because the initial questions tend to be more generic and rather subjective. E.g. What type of project should I do? Or what are some of the interesting careers? All of us are reasonably opinionated and have biases. So for such highly subjective questions, it is best for the student to get a broad range of opinions so that they get a reasonably complete picture of the space of possible solutions. Which brings me to another point. I believe, for such questions, it is important for us to try to get to know the students background in detail before we give suggestions. Students are rather impressionable at that stage and it is important that they don’t make decisions simply based on limited/biased feedback. Also, the goal of TII is to make students think and question. So we MUST make them question our suggestions/advice as well. If we realize they aren’t, questions must be induced.
Naturally, from the range of opinions, the student will tend to gravitate towards one person or a few people and then start asking more specific question. At this point, a one-to-one mentoring system should work just fine.
I think my key point here is something that has been repeatedly stressed before on the group, that we need to be careful what we say to these kids. I think we should try our best to give them advice that is best for them, which might not be what we would do based on our likes/dislikes and talents - even if we have certain biases against that advice. A many-to-one system neutralizes that bias to some extent.
Lookin forward to what you guys think.
Thanks,
Anshul.
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Vijay
when we determine how best to streamline the process. do we set up
separate threads for each kid or does the primary mentor collate the
general feedback and advice he receives from the other mentors?
another more crippling concern is, how do we get kids to take the
first step and contact us? in vanisha's and abhishek's experience, not
a single kid got in touch; although i pointed out that this was a long
term commitment and that kids would certainly reach out to us at some
stage, the two were rather disheartened by the initial failure.
let it be said -- in the long run we are hoping to offer bright
students a wealth of contacts on a networking scale that might be
unprecedented for india. but if we try to cram too much information
into our classroom sessions we risk not being able to make an
impression at all. remember: it's better to repeat a few core points
in the classroom than try and fit too many ideas. reinforce the idea
of mentorship; repeat the promise of two-way interaction over and over
if you must. after all, what's the point if nobody remembers (or has
the motivation) to add celebrity guest speakers such as ourselves on
one of the popular networking sites?
i have one more point to make regarding the process of mentoring. i'm
involved with guiding this talented young american writer: this person
sends me short stories on a regular basis -- almost one a week. i try
and respond at my own pace, but i also try and do as honest a job as
possible with the comments. i read carefully, i make sure i'm not
tired when i'm reading the piece, and that i'm not letting my own
reading biases or taste influence my comments. i'll often point the
person in the direction of great writing, but i also include the
caveat that those are just a start. my point is, we should remember
never to get impatient if a person writes to us all the time. they
mean well; certainly, they trust and respect us to a great degree.
above all, give them space to grow. as anshul says: they must learn to
question our advice, and put it in perspective.
v