precious

For some reason Oryx and Crake makes me think of Gollum from Lord of the Rings. I kept waiting for Snowman/Jimmy to call his stuff - any of it - something - "preshussssssss". A lot of people complained about the length of the book. Others wanted to brainstorm lists of ways to get the mentees to read it in the fall - assuming that there's going to be an issue. "If we as seniors had a hard time with it, what are the first years going to say." I think that by approaching it this way, assuming there's going to be a problem, these mentors are meeting trouble half way, and maybe even creating a problem where there isn't one. We looked at the trouble with assumptions and I think it applies here. I think saying to them, "don't worry, it all comes together at the end" encourages the mentees to see go looking for a problem where there might not be one. I didn't have a problem waiting to see how the book turns out in the end. I was required to read the book and so I did.

In my first semester one of my professors piled on a huge amount of (what I thought were) complex readings. She expected us to read them and made herself available for discussing them in class if there were questions. She did not lecture on the reading because she felt that was redundant and provided lectures which contained other information. This course was a lot of work but I appreciated her high expectations of us. At the end of the course I felt like I'd really accomplished something. If the reading had been spoonfed to me, along with the lectures, and the exams easy-peasy I don't think I would have had that same feeling of accomplishment.

This is university. I think the mentees can expect that the work is going to be challenging. I think it's okay to expect them to work. There lucky in that they have mentors to help them.

My secondary text, Under Her Wing, speaks to this as well: sometimes a mentor pushes you in a new direction, one in which you might not otherwise have treaded. All of the anecdotes showed that this was a positive experience in the end even if difficult at the time. The mentor's encouragement was supportive and the mentees knew they could do it.

This is the type of support I would like to offer to my group in the fall.