Thresholds + Dilemmas
When the student is ready, the teacher will appear
Edward and Melissa
When Melissa entered college, she was like many first-year students: young and far from home for the first time, curious, excited, and a little nervous.
She was also sure that Spanish was her worst subject, both academically difficult for her, and one in which she had little natural passion or interest. Taking a Spanish course was a general education requirement at Melissa’s university, however, so she knew she was not done with studying the language completely. Her plan was to get to college, take the required courses her first year, and be done with Spanish forever.
Edward was her first-year Spanish instructor. Over time, he would come to impact her views not only about Spanish, but also about herself.
From the get-go, the course was different from what she expected. First, she said, there was a lot more opportunity for students and the instructor to talk to one another in small groups than in other courses. Spanish class was a unique opportunity for showing personal interest in one another and in building rapport: “Unlike other subjects, you could really bring yourself, since you had to talk about yourself in all of these dialogues.”
Edward would circulate and take part in these conversations with students. Melissa said that he seemed to make a point to get to know all of the students as they practiced their dialogues in small groups, including knowing where students were from and what they were involved in on campus. Beyond teaching Spanish, he seemed to take a genuine, “human first” interest in his students.
Over time, Melissa came to know Edward as much as he knew his students. He had come to teach Spanish at the University after learning to speak it as an adult. With no previous knowledge of the language, he had developed an interest in learning Spanish after meeting his future spouse, who was a native speaker. Edward had not only started to study Spanish, but moved abroad, to a country where he was not fluent in the language, to demonstrate his commitment to his future wife.
“He seemed like he had lived this grand life,” Melissa told me, and said she felt inspired by Edward’s sense of adventure, particularly at a time when she was away from home for the first time, and looking to “step out of [her] comfort zone.”
Getting to know his students— and letting them get to know him— offered the opportunity for deepening students’ interest in their work together, learning to speak Spanish.
Melissa and her instructor continued to stay in touch after the course ended. He came to be an academic advisor and, eventually, a mentor to Melissa. “He was clearly open to mentoring me and getting to know me,” Melissa recalled. She described him as someone who asked the kind of questions that few people would take the time to ask: powerful, authentic questions about Melissa’s long-term interests and goals.
Eventually, Edward approached Melissa and suggested that she consider a minor in Spanish, and take the leap of studying abroad.
When she entered college, Melissa believed that Spanish was her worst subject, but she was also at a moment where she was willing to try something know. As she became more proficient in Spanish—but also as Edward’s support for her at a critical time grew—Melissa became more amenable to the idea of making Spanish a major part of her academic career, and to the idea that she was capable of taking a bigger risk.
So the following year, she applied to study abroad. She added Spanish as a minor, and later spent a semester in Spain, deliberately moving to a part of the country where little English was spoken and staying with a host who spoke only Spanish. Melissa challenged herself as her mentor had done. She felt inspired, she said, to follow Edward’s footsteps.
Being Ready to be Mentored
In sharing what I have learned about mentoring relationships, you will read a lot here about what mentors did to have life-changing impacts on mentees. But you will also hear about how mentees, themselves, were ready to be mentored, both by the circumstances in their lives and by their approach to being in a mentorship. Mentors and mentees did these things even when they didn’t call it a mentorship until much later.
For mentees, this involved a concept I told you about last time: what sociologist Jack Mezirow described in his theory of transformative learning, the idea of a “disorienting dilemma,”that helps to explain when a person is ready to be mentored1. Disorienting dilemmas are difficult–sometimes tragic or traumatic–experiences; they represent moments of transition. These moments of struggle and change, which challenge people’s basic assumptions, signal a mentee is ready for changes in attitude and beliefs—and that they are ready to be mentored. Thresholds of change. So a college freshman far from home, a student struggling in and out of school school, a young employee ready to make a next step, a high school athlete losing his father, or a pilot at risk for losing his job are all examples of mentees you will read about in the coming posts whose lives were at important moments of impasse. These were moments when many people met their mentors. They were also moments when the mentees accepted mentorship.
Melissa would never have been ready for her time abroad without her mentor teaching her Spanish, of course. But she also might never have gone as far with her studies—and her change of mindset— if her instructor had never taken the time to build an authentic, supportive relationship with her as a person, and if she had not been open to that connection at a time when she need it most.
Mezirow J. (1991). Transformative dimensions of adult learning. Jossey-Bass.