It’s now nearly a year since my last mentoring session and this will be my third blog post about the process. When I applied for a-n mentoring funding I was clear that I expected the process to cover a period of two years so, with half the money spent and half the time elapsed, I am kind of on track.
Despite this it feels as if I have let things drift, but I’ve learnt by now not to worry too much about what my feelings are saying and to try to keep a clear view of what is actually happening. The past year has been full on and a lot has happened in all my personal and professional lives.
I’ve just reread my first two blog posts about mentoring and they are quite vague and noncommittal. I’m not surprised by this because I don’t think you can really be expected to speak lucidly about a process when you are in it. Some people can and they enjoy going into the detail of the twists and turns of that process and perhaps the best blogs are ones which are written in that way. And in the past I’ve been of a mood to blog like that myself. But I’m not having that experience currently and I’ve decided that, instead of staying away and not posting anything (which would in any case be contrary to the terms of the a-n funding) I’ll just step up here and be honest about what’s going on.
So here goes: I don’t know what’s going on with my mentoring and I don’t know what to do next. But I’m not worried about that. I’ll be thinking about it over the next few weeks now that the teaching year has come to an end and I get a few months to think again. I’ll make some decisions and something will happen and then I’ll tell you about it.
Mentoring aside: you know when you’ve got an idea and you’re excited about it but you don’t want to say too much about it because if you do it will never happen? Well, that’s where I’m at right now. And, even in saying that I may have said too much…
