Reflection

Now we move on to Chapter 3: To Everything There is a Season, courtesy of Lois Zachary and The Byrds. This week was my week to prepare a literature discussion based on the text. It would be a whole heck of a lot easier to incorporate my secondary text if would ever get here. A phone call to the Toronto Women's Bookstore wasn't very productive: no answer. I'm back to scanning Amazon looking for another option, whether that might be a different book or same book, different source. Ahhh if only I had a mentor to help me figure these things out. ;) (or rather to tell me what to do.)

The chapter is pretty straightforward: four stages in a mentoring relationship (prep, neg, enable, close). I really hate that word 'enable'. I discussed it with my group and no one else shares my *context*. To me enabling is what you do or do not do that allows an abusive relationship to continue. Parents enable their children when they let them move back in as adults. Battered women enable their partners when they make excuses for them, or excuse their behaviour. Enablers are people who perpetuate awful behaviour (in my experience). Now Zachary is telling me to become an *enabler*????? My group tried to help me wrap my head around this one. Apparently in Drama and Education and Community, enabling is not such a bad word as it is at Al-Anon. Apparently, enabling can mean 'helping' in a good sense: you enable someone to succeed, you enable them to perform, you enable them to act in a positive way. Hmmmm. Context again. It's all about context.

As I sit here blogging away, I think of Zachary's passion as it appears: r e f l e c t i o n. I guess that should be reflection with an uppercase R. Reflection. R E F L E C T I O N. I can just imagine Zachary's bookshelf: full of lovely notebooky journals in all colour and styles, pastels, vibrants, coil bound, lined, unlined.... sounds beautiful. Zachary is enamoured with the task of recording everything: your thoughts, feelings, ideas, plans, hopes, fears, experiences - reflect reflect reflect on everything. It will help you (she says) as you proceed in your mentorship relationship. It will help you see where you've been; it will help you evaluate your progress. It will help you assess and analyze your assumptions which will help you avoid pitfalls. It will help you understand your mentee. Hmmm. I can see her point and if I had time in my high-paying salaried position where I'm getting paid to mentor someone I think I could find the time to stay in the office and write about it. But as a student-mother-grunt worker I have a hard time getting here (and staying awake long enough) to write. It's awful the amount of time my courses are taking this semester. I'm only taking four but I am still barely keeping up. I really miss the elegantly simple i.e. logical French and cs courses I've taken the last three semesters. It's so nice when there's a right and a wrong answer. Makes studying so much easier. This semester is all papers papers papers. Ick.

Uggh Gotta get to class.