Re: Mentoring Feedback
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Hi David!
Thanks for your review!
David Nusinow wrote:
| My first mentee felt uncomfortable with the bug system and wanted to
learn
| more about how it was used so she would feel confident when submitting and
| manipulating bugs. So I decided to do a live IRC tutorial in a rather
impromptu
| fashion on the BTS. This seemed to go over pretty well, and I'm happy
with how
| it turned out. We've had other live tutorials that were advertised in
advance,
| and people liked them, so I think if I had planned mine beforehand and
| advertised it, it might have been more effective. There was also a
preliminary
| document by Matt Palmer on using the BTS, which I didn't use, but is
available
| at least in draft form.
I think a live IRC tutorial sounds like a really great way to go about
mentoring, and definitely useful for more people than just the
mentor/mentee. I know we have policies about logging IRC but maybe if
there's a scheduled -women mentoring tutorial an exception can be made?
Or at least digest notes can be published on the dw website?
| Beyond the announcement thing, I would have planned my tutorial a little
| better in advance, but overall it went well. One problem is that my mentee
| didn't really ask me much after that. I think I should have extended
| invitations to keep asking me for more help/tutorials/package reviews/etc.
| Since then, we see each other, but she does't ask me questions. I'm
not sure if
| she's just too good for me now ;-) or if I gave the impression that our
| relationship was over. I think communicating the idea that the
relationship
| between mentor and mentee can be ongoing is important, and I should
establish
| that more in the future.
Probably for beginners there's an initial period where they need to
learn a lot in a short time and that can dwindle, but having an ongoing
mentor relationship, or at least, communicating that you're open to it
can be very helpful. I'm sure that from time to time questions will come
up past the intial 'honeymoon period' ;) We can't all know everything, hey?
| Since my first mentor/mentee relationship seemed to be over, I was
assigned
| a second mentee. She had good questions, but this came at a time when
I was way
| overloaded, and I really shouldn't have agreed to take someone on when
I didn't
| have the time. She asked very good questions, and I wasn't able to get
back to
| her at one point for a whole month. I didn't have time to set up proper
| tutorials or anything that might have helped her, when I should have.
Since the
| last email after a month-long delay I haven't heard from her (it's
been about
| two weeks) and I assume she's dropped me as a mentor.
Nope :) But it brings up an interesting point. People learn by
observation, and I at least can be *very* slack about replying to email
if I've seen that the person that I'm sending email to can be slack as
well. It's sort of a self perpetuating cycle really. I'm not sure what
the solution is to break out of that other than what you say, be honest
with yourself as to whether you have the time or not.
| While I want to help her
| out more, this should definitely be a lesson to mentors: don't take on
a mentee
| if you don't have the time, you may just wind up alienating them.
Hopefully
| this mentee will reply but I'm worried that I did more harm than good
here.
I'm not alienated, just overloaded as well. No harm :)
Perhaps these particular points should have been off list as it relates
to the particulars of our mentor/mentee assignment but if other people
can learn from mistakes we've made then I'm happy to share.
~ Penny
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