How to Interact With Your New Mentor

I signed up for a mentor program which pairs you with ASU architecture alumni. Jen brought it to my attention as she's a mentor coordinator for the interior design association at ASU. The Allumni group is actually the one coordinating everything and they did a pretty poor job at advertising the event. There was a good mix of people there, for the about 20 students who did show up. Three landscape design, ten interior design, six architecture, two industrial design, and a few planning students.

At the orientation at the beginning, as the organizers were introducing themselves, I thought one of them looked familiar. I took a look at her name badge and recognized Michelle Watanabe. She was working on a business degree after her architecture masters and organized a group of three high schoolers for the "It makes a village" masonry event back when I was in high school. She was surprised to see me and didn't recognize me at first with my little jawline beard. She congratulated me on getting into upper division and gave me her business card. She's VP at a small firm I think she helped start.

Last years mentor program sounded like a flop. Apparently no one bothered to stay in touch with thier mentors after the first meeting, if they met at all. To rectify this problem, the organizers included a thick packet of worksheets and a callender specifiying when to send an email, when to organize a lunch, when the mentor would send a peice of advice, and worksheets of academic and professional goals to discuss with your mentor. I found it a bit ridiculous, especially the worksheet to fill out before returning in the spring: What did you do over your winter break? [etc.] Your mentor will ask you these questions and others during the welcome back mixer. Even our conversations are apparently scripted. I had a sudden vision of everyone standing around with thier mentor with thier nose stuck in the packet of scripts responding automatically to the questions the mentors read off of their sheets.

Anyway, the mentor-mentee group split off into our respective fields. There were six architecture students and about twelve mentors. Granted, not everyone could make it to the meeting that signed up, but I was still surprised by the amount of architect mentors there.

We wore name badges and essentially speed-dated each mentor, moving from each one and talking for about five minutes. At the end of the session, we would write down our top three choices of mentors and submit them. There was an interesting mix of architects there. There were a few project managers, a technical spec writer, a guy who oversaw tract housing design who encouraged me to take a few law classes, a Taiwanese architect who sounded really interesting when I could understand him half of the time, and an architect who worked for a firm which built projects for itself from investment.

Still need to go into the office to look over the profiles to make our final decisions.