Mentoring is kaput

I’ve been teaching, tutoring and mentoring for decades now. Ever since undergrad, where I was a TA and then over summer breaks, and then again in graduate school. I did Big Brothers, Big Sisters, Girls Who Code, tutoring programs at public libraries, and other non-profits, etc. etc. And it’s been fun! I enjoy teaching and tutoring; My father was a college professor and his father was a principal; so it’s in the blood.

But this year, 2025, I undertook more challenges in this arena that I ever did previously. And I learned some lessons along the way, which I expound on below.

What I did in 2025

Code in Place

I signed up for my second consecutive year as a Code-in-Place Section Leader to teach Python programming. The class was full of adults (as it was the previous year). I didn’t have much fun doing it the second time around. I feel I phoned it in or just didn’t have the enthusiasm/excitement as I did the first time I did it.

Workplace Mentoring

I signed up to 2 mentoring programs at work. One was to be a mentor to a group of colleagues (little lower on the totem pole than I); and the other was a 1-1 mentoring situation. It was the first time I’ve been a mentor in quite some time.

The previous year, I myself was a mentee in two separate mentoring groups (back-to-back, not concurrently). Well, the thing I now realize after undertaking being a mentor is that I, myself, was a lousy mentee. I phoned it in, cancelled a bunch of times, kept myself on mute, and just didn’t contribute too much (or at least as much as I could have).

And well, what do you know? I’m having the tables turned on me this time around. My mentees are nice, but I’m not getting much out of them. They’re not driving the relationship. I feel they are doing what I did: a box-checking exercise of saying Hey, I participated in a program at work; this counts at my year-end performance review! Heck, that was definitely one of my drivers for joining. It’s like pulling teeth to have them say something. Or it’s just BSing. There’s no introspection or sharing of anything exciting going on.

It sounds like I’m blaming them, I know. And I don’t mean to. It’s just frustrating that I want something more for them than they want for themselves, I suppose. Possibly, I need to tune my own thinking. Maybe they’ve never been in a mentoring program before and they just wanted to try it. In any case, I dread my meetings with them as I feel I need to drum up content for a half hour or 45 minutes. The bottom line is that I’m not having fun.

Non-profit mentoring

I’m a mentor at a non-profit tech bootcamp that’s teaching AI; this is a pilot program because this stuff is so new. No one knows how to teach this material; the curriculum is sort of just made up with what the latest, coolest stuff is out in the world. As a mentor in the program, I walk around and assist the students with questions they may have and try to troubleshoot on the spot. I joined this because it would give me a view into all this latest tech and to help me parse through it. So in fact, it was a desire for my own self-preservation that led me to volunteer with this program because if I don’t jump in, I’ll make myself into a dinosaur and face early retirement. Volunteering here is much more engaging than the other programs above. The students high-five you when they understand something or get their programs to work!

4. I’m also teaching sailing for the first time, which I won’t go into just yet.

In any case, maybe my desires have shifted, or I’ve realized I have finite time left, but I want to do things that have impact.

A couple of realizations

The difference in the programs

One theme that strikes me about the programs I participated in this year vs. previous years is that I’ve been working with adults this year. And my observation is that adults (myself included!) seem to not make for good mentees! They don’t want to admit vulnerabilities, or fears or admit they don’t know something; instead “it’s all good”, they “just need more time”. There’s a ready explanation for everything; it’s all rationalized. There’s nothing to give input on, because they have it all figured out. So it winds up not being fun.

With kids and teens and even some young adults (like at the non-profit I described above), these inhibitions haven’t fully developed, so there’s more open-ness. It’s easier to give input and to have it received. That’s when you get those high-fives.

Changing up the mentoring

I’ve been a mentee in a group mentoring program; I’ve been a mentor in a group mentoring program; I’ve been a 1-1 mentor to an individual mentee. The only thing left is for me to be a mentee in 1-1 program. For some reason, I’ve been avoiding this. It probably has to do with I said above. I also have those same reservations that I assign to my mentees! In addition, it’s because I don’t want to put in the work; It’s a lot easier to shirk duties when in a group, so participating in a mentor group program as a mentee was easier. Also being an individual mentee requires me to do the work and I’ve not been willing to do it. Perhaps, I feel like I may be judged too? I mean, I already have my own boss giving me feedback, as well as other senior managers who relay feedback. Why do I need to deal with yet another senior manager? Especially if I confess my desire to rise up in the corporate hierarchy which means I’m going to have to adopt new behaviors, try other things that I may not be comfortable with, etc. And possibly admit failure both to myself and to this temporarily-assigned mentor.

Well, I have plenty of reasons not to do it, but feel the fear and do it anyway, right?

I may sign up for one just so I can knock that last mentoring type off my list? It could go quite well right? :)