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Movies are actually very good at showing a natural mentor relationship. Every Pixar movie has a mentor, often two. For mental development, and emotional. The he

by muzani 5y ago

Movies are actually very good at showing a natural mentor relationship. Every Pixar movie has a mentor, often two. For mental development, and emotional. The hero is stuck on something and only gets out of it with the mentor's help. The 7-min Pixar short Piper is IMO the most direct example.

samh748 5y ago
Gonna add a bit of my own difficulties with this: I've come across many sources that speak so highly of these mentorship relationships, and even go as far as to recommend how to contact them and follow up and whatnot. It all sounds easy in theory, so romantic even, but in execution, I've found it to be much more complicated than that. How does one actually present themselves positively without coming off as desperate? And what if we are desperate (which often is the case for clueless people like myself)? I understand the notion of "When the student is ready, the master will come." and how it makes sense. But isn't it the clueless people that need the most help? What am I missing here? I certainly miss the days of grad school when I had advisors and a committee and entire buildings of people to network with and discuss everything. The moment I stepped into the "real world"; damn, was I clueless. I remember going to job interviews, following the advice I've been given from endless books and articles, eager to impress, but in retrospect most likely just made a fool out of myself. / end of rant
- muzani 5y ago
  I think desperation and vulnerability is actually appealing. A mentorship involves some metamorphosis. You need to kill a little part of your identity. You morph from a grad student to an employee, but in between, you're a vulnerable jobless person. But if you cling on to that old identity of being some brilliant person with a PhD, the change will be tough. I used to teach bootcamps. There is a skill bar - you have to touch type, you have to be able to focus on a problem for 15 minutes. If you can't do that, you need another mentor. But the hardest barrier is identity. People who join a 6 month bootcamp as an entrepreneur and leave as an entrepreneur -- they don't get much out of it and frequently don't write code after they're done. My favorite student was that Uber driver who went in, got a job after 2 months, and stopped attending classes. He just dived into it, destroyed his identity and came out new. He wasn't smarter than the others and that actually helped him. When job hunting, I ask feedback from every non-automated rejection. All of them are micro mentors, though some have gone out of the way to be detailed. Notably one guy rejected me for not doing well enough in the technical test, so I asked him how to improve. I expected a book or some modern algo training site, but nah, he got good by just playing with Project Euler and taught me that what I needed was patience, not leverage. Another one went through my "tell me about yourself" answer and taught me the importance of catching attention from the first sentence. At the time, I was too stubborn to take the advice, but years later, I planned for applications in the manner she taught me.
  - samh748 5y ago
    This is really really great stuff. Thank you so much for elaborating!
samh748 5y ago
Taken another way, mentors are basically evaluating and selecting for individuals who are worthy of their time and attention. Granted, they have to, because time and attention are limited. But what I take issue with, is exactly the romanticization of mentorship in movies and self-help books that we see way too often. Mentorship basically does not exist for those in the bottom. As with everything else, "the rich only get richer". / end of another rant
- muzani 5y ago
  > "Mentorship basically does not exist for those in the bottom" I love movies for this and also why I recommended Piper. It's about a baby bird learning to get food, and a crab teaches it. But you can apply the same pattern everywhere. Movies have something called the Three Act Structure. Act 1: Hero faces a problem, tries to solve it their way, gets deeper in it. Act 2 begins where the hero is now stuck. There's a mentor by now that the hero doesn't acknowledge. The hero will continue to fail on their own and can't see the solution. Then the mentor points it out and all is solved, with Act 3 being the denouement. In Lion King, Timon & Pumbaa mentor Simba from being scared/guilty to being carefree, and again from carefree to bold. In romance films, it's usually two people changing a part of themselves for the other person. Boy learns to be honest, girl learns to be less judgemental. Conan learns that flesh can be stronger than steel. Sarah Connor learns about humanity from a robot assassin. And so on. I still like comparing it to dating, in that it just happens. It's awkward to make it formal and long term. Sometimes we have rituals for this, like university and 1-1s. Often you have to start the process long before the ritual, though.
  - samh748 5y ago
    Thanks again for this! > I still like comparing it to dating, in that it just happens. It's awkward to make it formal and long term. Sometimes we have rituals for this, like university and 1-1s. Often you have to start the process long before the ritual, though. This last bit is especially golden. The informal process, the ritual. Too often I get fixated on trying to rush into "formal" territory, which then ruins things because it wasn't time for that yet. The informal aspects haven't played out and matured enough to become formal, something like that. Thank you so much for your "mentorship" :)
samh748 5y ago
Sorry I went extreme on the criticism (which, to be clear, wasn't aimed at you, but our culture). I'm really thankful for your comment, as it helped provide the critical piece of information that is often lacking in conversations about mentorship.

by muzani 5y ago

samh748 5y ago

Gonna add a bit of my own difficulties with this: I've come across many sources that speak so highly of these mentorship relationships, and even go as far as to recommend how to contact them and follow up and whatnot. It all sounds easy in theory, so romantic even, but in execution, I've found it to be much more complicated than that. How does one actually present themselves positively without coming off as desperate? And what if we are desperate (which often is the case for clueless people like myself)? I understand the notion of "When the student is ready, the master will come." and how it makes sense. But isn't it the clueless people that need the most help? What am I missing here? I certainly miss the days of grad school when I had advisors and a committee and entire buildings of people to network with and discuss everything. The moment I stepped into the "real world"; damn, was I clueless. I remember going to job interviews, following the advice I've been given from endless books and articles, eager to impress, but in retrospect most likely just made a fool out of myself. / end of rant

muzani 5y ago
I think desperation and vulnerability is actually appealing. A mentorship involves some metamorphosis. You need to kill a little part of your identity. You morph from a grad student to an employee, but in between, you're a vulnerable jobless person. But if you cling on to that old identity of being some brilliant person with a PhD, the change will be tough. I used to teach bootcamps. There is a skill bar - you have to touch type, you have to be able to focus on a problem for 15 minutes. If you can't do that, you need another mentor. But the hardest barrier is identity. People who join a 6 month bootcamp as an entrepreneur and leave as an entrepreneur -- they don't get much out of it and frequently don't write code after they're done. My favorite student was that Uber driver who went in, got a job after 2 months, and stopped attending classes. He just dived into it, destroyed his identity and came out new. He wasn't smarter than the others and that actually helped him. When job hunting, I ask feedback from every non-automated rejection. All of them are micro mentors, though some have gone out of the way to be detailed. Notably one guy rejected me for not doing well enough in the technical test, so I asked him how to improve. I expected a book or some modern algo training site, but nah, he got good by just playing with Project Euler and taught me that what I needed was patience, not leverage. Another one went through my "tell me about yourself" answer and taught me the importance of catching attention from the first sentence. At the time, I was too stubborn to take the advice, but years later, I planned for applications in the manner she taught me.
- samh748 5y ago
  This is really really great stuff. Thank you so much for elaborating!

samh748 5y ago

Taken another way, mentors are basically evaluating and selecting for individuals who are worthy of their time and attention. Granted, they have to, because time and attention are limited. But what I take issue with, is exactly the romanticization of mentorship in movies and self-help books that we see way too often. Mentorship basically does not exist for those in the bottom. As with everything else, "the rich only get richer". / end of another rant

muzani 5y ago
> "Mentorship basically does not exist for those in the bottom" I love movies for this and also why I recommended Piper. It's about a baby bird learning to get food, and a crab teaches it. But you can apply the same pattern everywhere. Movies have something called the Three Act Structure. Act 1: Hero faces a problem, tries to solve it their way, gets deeper in it. Act 2 begins where the hero is now stuck. There's a mentor by now that the hero doesn't acknowledge. The hero will continue to fail on their own and can't see the solution. Then the mentor points it out and all is solved, with Act 3 being the denouement. In Lion King, Timon & Pumbaa mentor Simba from being scared/guilty to being carefree, and again from carefree to bold. In romance films, it's usually two people changing a part of themselves for the other person. Boy learns to be honest, girl learns to be less judgemental. Conan learns that flesh can be stronger than steel. Sarah Connor learns about humanity from a robot assassin. And so on. I still like comparing it to dating, in that it just happens. It's awkward to make it formal and long term. Sometimes we have rituals for this, like university and 1-1s. Often you have to start the process long before the ritual, though.
- samh748 5y ago
  Thanks again for this! > I still like comparing it to dating, in that it just happens. It's awkward to make it formal and long term. Sometimes we have rituals for this, like university and 1-1s. Often you have to start the process long before the ritual, though. This last bit is especially golden. The informal process, the ritual. Too often I get fixated on trying to rush into "formal" territory, which then ruins things because it wasn't time for that yet. The informal aspects haven't played out and matured enough to become formal, something like that. Thank you so much for your "mentorship" :)

samh748 5y ago

Sorry I went extreme on the criticism (which, to be clear, wasn't aimed at you, but our culture). I'm really thankful for your comment, as it helped provide the critical piece of information that is often lacking in conversations about mentorship.