Becoming a Mentor

I have had many mentors throughout my life, and I am sure that I have been a mentor many times before, but have never labeled myself as one. It is somewhat of an overwhelming task at times to be someone's mentor. Being a mentor carries a lot of weight because you have influence over a person, and it implies that you know more about a certain subject than someone else.

Growing up in a household with both my parents being engineers, they were always big advocates of my technology skills, even from a young age. I always took learning about technology for granted, but considered myself to be fairly technology-savvy. It has been a rewarding experience to mentor someone else because the questions she has are things that seem simple to me, but that I find hard to explain step-by-step to someone else.

Being a mentor is a lot like being a first grade teacher because it involves breaking everything down in to simple and straight-forward terms. I hope that in the future, after I have been teaching for a few more years, that I will be able to mentor first-year teachers and help them with a lot of their questions and concerns.