Mentoring is Key

I have been debating whether I wanted to write this blog topic or not, but I have decided that I want to. After I had graduated college I had written a blog about teachers and professors who have had a major impact on my life. Today I am going to write about mentors who have really guided me and may not know it.

So I have met many people in my life. Being a Pastor's Kid, I have the opportunity of meeting a wide variety of people who do a wide variety of occupations, but I have also met people on my own now that I am older. This combination of people have led me to evaluate my own life and have shaped how I react to things.

This blog has really been in development in my mind the last two weeks, but really came to fruition when I was speaking to a counselor about a specific Grad School program I am trying to pursue. She had mentioned that there will be people in class who will have tons of experience and to partner up with them to learn some very invaluable lessons and skills. This of course brought me to this "Aha" moment and now I'm writing a dedication blog to those who have been willing to help teach me these lessons in the world (even though I'm pretty sure the majority of these people will never read it, but it is here for them).

On of the first people who really made an impact on me with guiding me in a direction was an adult volunteer when I was in seventh grade. This young woman was awesome! She mentioned how when she was in college she had liberty spikes and was super into punk music. She was super alternative and was not afraid to be goofy and hit the tough subjects. She left shortly after that year, but she really influenced me on how to be a youth director and I use a lot of the same techniques she used on that Sunday night junior high girls class.

Another person who really impacted me was a friend of my brother who became a big sister to me. She was there for me whenever I needed her and shared her own experiences with me. She taught me how to be selfless and how not to be afraid to be vulnerable in front of people. She was actually the person who introduced me to Maya Angelou, coffee, The Bronte Sisters, and my favorite chapter of the Bible, Lamentations 3. I lost touch with her when I started college, but from what I'm seeing, she is still impacting youth in the same way she was able to inspire me to be a smart, strong woman who shouldn't be afraid to confront her weakness.

From my high school graduation through my sophomore year in college (This was exclusively teachers, but had some awesome profs my junior and senior year of college), I really just was influenced by teachers, but that kind of changed when I started working in retail.

I work with so many cool women who have taught me how to have fun at work. I cannot express the amount of community I feel when I go to work. It's seriously awesome!

But the person at work who has impacted me the most has been our general manager. When I started there, she was the assistant manager and I'm going to be honest here, she scared the crap out of me at first. I have no idea why, but she just was super intimidating or more so, my perception of her was that she was super intimidating. That kind of changed when I talked to her about school and found out that she had some of the same professors as I had and just talking to her about business. She was really helpful for me to put the connection of the lessons I was learning in class and how they were applicable to in the work world. There have also been times when I have seen her not as a manager, but as a leader (in my management class, we stated that being a manager does not make you a leader, but a leader can be a manager).

None of these women are perfect, but they are all different and were able to show me how to act in different situations. These women are in fact completely different from one another, but each have had a part in mentoring on how to be successful.