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Mentoring, Advising, and Beyond

I just turned 31 a few months ago. No, this isn't a post about being "traumatized" by getting older. It's about recognizing when you're old enough to be another person's mentor. I simply don't feel like I'm old enough to guide other people in their pursuits of journalism careers. I did my first journalism internship in 1995 and I still have a lot to learn. But here I am, managing my magazine's editorial internship, letting high schoolers shadow me on the job, helping a former intern get his first freelance magazine assignment, organizing a half-day high school journalism retreat, and giving professional advice to a local collegiate chapter of the National Association of Black Journalists. So what makes a good mentor? Does it come with age? Experience? (Are those two things the same to you?) Or is it simply helping where you can and not thinking about it too much?

Published Thursday, July 10, 2008 5:47 PM by AieshaLittle

Comments

# re: Mentoring, Advising, and Beyond

Tuesday, July 15, 2008 8:55 PM by aaronaup
I have an intern this summer as well. She just finished her first year in college and in many ways, I do not see myself as much older than her, only being out of college two years myself.

But here's my thought: We all got to where we are in our careers because we did something right. Even if we don't know what that something is, if we think it was a stroke of luck that our first paper hired us out of college, we made it into the biz.

I don't know how to prepare an intern for the world of journalism except to throw them in it. I've treated my intern like I do any other newsroom employee.

I hope it works out to be a good mentoring technique.
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