This week I had the pleasure of speaking with my mentor for the first time on the phone. It was nice to chat about the goals of our class and what we've decided to focus on for the semester. She told me a lot about herself and her journey to where she is today and it made me realize that although we are doing a lot of great things in our education at UNH, we still have a lot of time to figure out what in ideal career looks like to us and that what we think we see ourselves doing now may change in 5 or 10 years. She has had lots of different experiences in her professional career and I really think that's great.
I explained to Ms. Valenti how Jason and I would be working together for our teaching projects this semester and gave her a rough idea of what we're interested in sharing with the class. She really helped me to solidify some of those ideas and offered some suggestions for activities we could conduct (although I don't want to give too much information away).
The comment from her that really stuck with me from the whole conversation was one regarding her career as a whole; no matter where she was working at a given time, the most valuable lesson she said she learned was to make people feel appreciated for the work that they're doing, and let them know that it matters. I think this is extremely important because even in my summer/part time jobs, things sometimes get under your skin and hearing that you're doing a good job usually makes the load a little lighter. Whether you're in a leadership position or not, it never hurts to let the people around you know that you appreciate what they're doing for you and with you.
Glad you had a good conversation with Erin - she's great. Nice insight about not getting overly committed to a career path. If you had told me when I was your age that I would be here at UNH, I would have laughed (I knew one thing for sure: I was never coming back to NH). Life offers up many twists and turns.
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