Why Mentor?

Mentor: a trusted counselor or guide

Mentoring.  It can be simple, a bit of guidance for a big event, but short event, like our National Convention, or it can be a lifetime of committing yourself to helping someone learn and grow.  It can even be somewhere in between.

The question today is why do it?  Why "bother" trying to teach someone, to help your current or future competition grow so that some day they catch up with you- or gasp even surpass your knowledge.  We all know how the movies go- the student becomes the Master and yadda yadda yadda.

Well to start with, I love to hear myself talk.  ;).

Honestly, the shortest, simplest answer for me is pride.  I take pride in seeing "my" youth do well.  I take pride in hearing them rattle off genetics correctly, in asking them to help me evaluate a rabbit and seeing them catch all the same things I did, and maybe catching something I missed.  Even if they don't walk around shouting from the rooftops "Oh, Keep taught me everything I know!", I hope they will remember me fondly years down the road as someone that was kind, who was never too busy to answer a question, even if they felt a bit silly asking it.  In a hobby where there can be so much nastiness, I feel it is important to make an extra effort to be that bit of kindness that may be what keeps someone going.

In any event, hopefully they take it to heart and pass on their knowledge to others. 

Our knowledge and our understanding isn't something that should be jealously guarded. It should be a beacon, drawing in the curious, those who are thirsting to understand.  We should let them in to our private little world built by mistakes and missteps and educate them. 

Plus- there is nothing like seeing one of "your" kids or "your" adults run to you first with pride shining from their eyes, to tell you their big news.

-Kristen