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How to Boost Your Career and Improve Your Life
Find a mentor
Mentors exist in all shapes, sizes, and situations — like the wise men of old, they come bearing gifts
The “teacher” mentor
Dr. Anderson. It sounds like an average name to you, but to me, it sounds saintly. Somehow, my curriculum and his teaching schedule threw us together, an intellectual, shy English professor twenty years older and an enthusiastic, driven student. After the first class or two, I took every class he offered because he was so willing to share everything he knew with any student who asked.
I asked. Repeatedly.
Dr. Anderson became my first real mentor, a person who willingly gave me resources, prodded me with ideas, steered me to new authors, recommended me for a summer teaching opportunity, encouraged my writing, and helped direct my thesis. He wrote a letter of recommendation for my first full-time teaching job at a nearby community college and told me repeatedly that he believed in me.
Thirty years later, I still send him a Christmas card and receive a response in return. We both recognize the incomparable value of a mentor-mentee relationship.
