Have you ever had a mentor?

[Gidney N Cloyd]

Poll question: Have you ever had a mentor?

I've been thinking lately how my career path might have been different if I'd had a good mentor. Somehow through every job I can think of I've always been left to my own device.
I'm curious how common it is to have a mentor or if that's just something you see in the movies.

[Starbucks Anarchist]

1. Yes, but I dumped her when she started dating Kenny Bania.

[trof]

3. I hate it when that happens.

[Starbucks Anarchist]

4. He thinks anything that dissolves in milk is funny.

[geardaddy]

7. But why don't they call it "Round-tine?"

:shrug:

[Starbucks Anarchist]

8. That's gold, Jerry! Gold!

[geardaddy]

12. lmao

:rofl:

Cleee-aaasic!

[Gidney N Cloyd]

10. And she was the BEST mentor, the BEST.

[trof]

2. What's a 'professional' mentor?

I guess I had a mentor, sorta?
A friend of mine was a pilot with TWA.
I liked his lifestyle and decided to go for it.
He was helpful in telling me what I'd have to do to more-or-less follow his path.
Mentor might be too strong a term for our relationship.
We're pretty much peers.
:shrug:

[Gidney N Cloyd]

9. "Professional" as in career mentoring, as opposed to someone from

the Big Brothers/Big Sisters program.

[trof]

11. OK, thanks.

[CaliforniaPeggy]

5. I guess you could say I had a professional mentor...

And in fact, I still have her. My poetry teacher.

And she's still teaching me, on an informal basis.

She emails me my homework, and I do it, and email it back. She critiques it, and so it goes...

She's been very good for me!

I've had a couple of personal mentors, too...and they still matter a lot!

I've been very lucky!

:hi:

[flvegan]

6. I've had a couple fantastic title attorneys help me along my way.

I'd not be here if not for them.

[XemaSab]

13. I have had other colleagues that taught me a lot

but I agree with you, professional mentoring is critical and I have had very little of it.

[TZ]

14. I had a GREAT scientific mentor

At NIH . Unfortunately he lost a political battle and left as I did but I learned MORE scientifically in the six months I worked there than in my previous nine years of work

[abq e streeter]

15. Through nothing more than luck , I've had two great saxophone mentors

neither of whom would probably even think they were. Two of the very best, one rock, and the other blues ( and my ambitions were for rock and blues, not jazz), in a world where almost every horn player is a jazz player. I learned a lot from being around them , and playing with them ( the blues guy a lot more times than the rock guy) even though neither ever formally "taught" me anything...