I recently signed up to become a mentor in the new program Studio Art Quilt Associates has put into operation. \u00a0Potential mentors and mentoring applicants each fill out an online application form.\u00a0Those applying to be mentored are termed ‘mentees’, a word none of us likes much, but despite looking around I’ve found no apparent synonym.<\/p>\n
At different times in my life there have been several people who, by showing or suggesting possible ways forward towards my goals have in effect mentored me. \u00a0 It was not always fibre art related.\u00a0 For a time, usually briefly, each of those people shared background and experience, knowledge, wisdom perhaps, that was at the time much greater than my own, and I value what they passed on. \u00a0 \u00a0I realised when this call went out that I have many years’ experience in textile and fibre art, and, before my life became rather peripatetic, I taught at secondary school\u00a0level. \u00a0It’s always pleased me to encounter an adult I used to teach as a young kid, because even in the case of several known ratbags who were\/are not all bad, I feel that I positively influenced each person in some way. \u00a0The mentor’s form required some outline of fibre art and quiltmaking experience, and asked about motivation to mentor.<\/p>\n
The applicants filled out a form checking off areas of quilt art practice they feel they want help with, and outlined their goals \u00a0against which to measure progress over the coming year. \u00a0 With that they submitted images of their work so far. \u00a0I was shown several applications to see if I thought I could work with one of them. \u00a0I chose one, Julie from a small western US town, because her goals were clearly formed, and, over the recommended commitment of one year, realistically attainable.<\/span><\/p>\n So the process has begun, we’ve emailed a couple of times and talked once over skype with another chat scheduled for a few weeks’ time. \u00a0I don’t expect to be bombarded with reports, as the rate of scheduling contact is hers, not imposed by me, and leaves her plenty of time to get on with things. \u00a0I gather through contact with the mentors’ online chat group that some mentors have weekly progress reports or even phone talks set up – does \u00a0that make me off hand, not committed? \u00a0 I don’t think so – it could be some other mentees are needier, and maybe certain important goals are looming fast, or maybe some are looking to their mentors to spoon feed them with over protective hand holding. \u00a0It could also been some neediness on the part of one or two mentors!<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I recently signed up to become a mentor in the new program Studio Art Quilt Associates has put into operation. \u00a0Potential mentors and mentoring applicants each fill out an online application form.\u00a0Those applying to be mentored are termed ‘mentees’, a word none of us likes much, but despite looking around I’ve found no apparent synonym. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3212","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6uxpF-PO","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alisonschwabe.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3212","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alisonschwabe.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alisonschwabe.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alisonschwabe.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alisonschwabe.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3212"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.alisonschwabe.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3212\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3213,"href":"https:\/\/www.alisonschwabe.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3212\/revisions\/3213"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alisonschwabe.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3212"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alisonschwabe.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3212"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alisonschwabe.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3212"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}