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Use the following suggestions for mentoring activities
and journaling in order to help you get the most out of
your mentoring relationships!
20 Mentoring Activities
What can you do once you have found some mentors to
be part of your circle of supporters? Here is a laundry
list of possible suggestions. Some will be comfortable
or appropriate in your situation, and some will not.
Try to find some ideas that interest you, and bring
them up with your mentor(s).
1. Look at each other’s resumés and discuss
them.
2. Read an article and talk about it.
3. Compare your list of five favorite books and what
you loved about them.
4. Do the same with projects.
5. Find an area of disagreement, and explore the underlying
values that cause the difference.
6. Talk about your grandmothers, and how their lives
were different from the life you want to make now, and
how they were the same.
7. Visit a place that means something to your mentor,
and learn about why it’s important.
8. List the three most important decisions you ever
made, how you made them, who influenced you, and the
consequences.
9. Compare lists of risks you would and wouldn’t
take professionally.
10. Discuss what would be against your professional
ethics.
11. Ask your mentor who has influenced her and how.
12. Think about the influences on your own life, and
what you would like to seek at this point. Consult your
mentor about it.
13. Ask your mentor’s feedback on a piece of
your written work.
14. Practice something you have to do in public, and
ask your mentor to comment on the positive points and
points to improve.
15. Try something truly outside your routine, and report
on how it went. If you’re a biology major, try
a physics lab. Stretch yourself.
16. If you are visually oriented, bring in a picture
or collage that you create to represent your future,
and interpret it together.
17. Talk about what you most enjoyed last year, five
years ago, and ten years ago, and analyze it together.
18. Plan a dream vacation and see what you and your
mentor can learn from it.
19. Ask your mentor who she would most like to work
with and why.
20. Talk over your most satisfying accomplishments,
and figure out what made them that way.
And that’s in addition to setting goals, learning
how she sees you and your potential, developing an academic
or career plan, and evaluating your progress regularly.
Get started!
A Mentoring Journal
One of the best ways to understand yourself, your priorities,
your goals, and your potential is to keep a “Mentoring”
journal. It will help you integrate what you are learning
from many different resources and will provide an outlet
for you to explore your own reflections on what mentors
are suggesting to you. Here is a sample entry to help
you get the idea:
“As I talked with Judy today, I realized that
some of my problem with taking too many classes is that
I just didn’t know what I was getting into. But
a lot of it is that I always feel I can do more than
I really can. The more I look at medicine as a career,
the more I question whether I can really do it. But
then I talked with Terry, and she was so encouraging
about my abilities. If I can just get a little more
realistic, maybe it will work out after all.”
Write notes after every mentoring meeting, even if
they are very brief. They do add up, month after month,
and patterns do emerge. Make some time over vacation
periods (at least four times a year) to look back at
your notes and write reflectively about what you learned,
and what might lie ahead. If you find it helpful, here
is a simple structure to use:
- My Accomplishments This Quarter:
- Significant Learnings:
- What I Hope to Accomplish Next Quarter:
- What I Hope to Accomplish This Year:
- Who Is in My Current Support System, including Mentors:
© Mary Fillmore, 2000. For permission to copy,
please call (802) 860-1034, or e-mail mfillmor@together.net.
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