giving/taking

week 1, 21st july- preparation

wantingkneading — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 10:08:52 +0000

Today we began the preparation for mentoring the 2nd years.
I have to say I’m pretty disappointed and not very excited about it at all. I guess it my own fault though…
There was a meeting at the end of last sem, once we’d finished mentoring the 1st years, which I didn’t attend. It seems as if at this meeting it was decided what we were going to do when it came to mentoring the 2nd years.
So I was totally unprepared when I got to the training and there was a fairly rigid brief already set for us. The brief, as I understand it, is to
a) create a database (presumably online, or as a print outcome) which lists and details all the things 2nd years might find useful. These “useful things” would include things like: the best printers for specific things; good galleries; where to get paper; advice about general uni stuff we wished we’d known earlier; good cheap places to eat etc.
b) hold/host an event which relates somehow to this information database. For example (and the example that kept getting pushed on us), we could have a treasure hunt/amazing race that required all the participants to go to a number of the places on the database, so they could see them and find out about them.
We are also supposed to create a survey to give to the 2nd years to try and find out what they’d like from a mentoring program.
I am pretty much completely opposed to all of this, except for the survey bit.
The whole thing doesn’t feel/sound like mentoring at all, it just seems like doing a project amongst the mentors, and sharing it with the mentees at the end.
It doesn’t seem like a collaborative thing.
What I want to get from mentoring is a connection with people from other years- I want to help develop and maintain a sense of community within the course. I want to meet them, feel comfortable talking to them and have them feel comfortable around me.
I don’t feel like this proposed database will facilitate this in any way.
If the idea of the database is to share knowledge with people, surely we can do it in a more social and interactive way.
I strongly doubt anyone would use a database anyway- there are hundreds of things buried deep in that wiki that someone cared about once before and will never be looked at again- things get lost in there and I think it will be a waste of our time making a database to put up there- it won’t be used and it doesn’t in any way help us connect with the 2nd years.

Anyway, I’m not feeling it and I’m not sure what to do about it. I am considering not continuing with the mentoring, based solely on the project I’ve been unexpectedly handed. I just don’t want to waste my time on something I don’t see as useful.
I had imagined just getting together with the 2nd years, talking with them and getting to know them. I had envisaged perhaps having a few afternoons together, loosely structured with projects that would require us all to sit around a big table, cutting things out of paper and making silly things. Little projects with loose and open briefs to be completed in groups of a few people over the course of a few hours, with maybe some BYOs- something casual that will give us an excuse to talk to one another.
The survey might be useful in finding out what they’d like from us, and hopefully we can work something different from there in, otherwise it might be peace out from me.

observations so far

wantingkneading — Tue, 06 May 2008 08:00:50 +0000

1.an email i sent to david

“Hi David,
We’ve scored a lovely group of students as our mentees and we’re really enjoying it!
I just wanted to let you know that a lot of the students are taking your advice to refer to their star signs quite literally. At least half of our 9-10 kids had used the (chinese) dragon symbol, or their western star sign as a very major part of their tattoo. While of course there is nothing wrong with doing that, it seems like some of them feel bound by it, even when they say personalities don’t really fit with the characteristics of that sign.
One of the students thought that including their sign was a mandatory part of the brief.
This was just something I observed today, and I’m not sure if its much of a concern but I thought it was probably worth letting you know.
Sorry not to speak in person, but I never seem to bump into you at uni.
Cheers,
Bella.”

2. i feel i am getting more confident at speaking as a designer
ive had to really concentrate on being articulate and speaking in a personable and engaging way and i feel like im getting better
3. mentoring gives you practice at giving constructive criticism, and boosts your conceptual development by making you analyse other peoples work thouroughly

week 3, 5th may

wantingkneading — Tue, 06 May 2008 07:55:37 +0000

so, this week i really wanted to get into the “taking” part of this giving/taking business. hehe, well it wasnt quite as evilly though out as that…it started off innocently enough:
this week i thought theyd all want to talk about their tattoo because its due next week, but none of them did. they said they were sick of talking about it. i was surprised cause i thought this would be the most stressful time of it when they were looking to make important decisions and would like our help. but huh, i was wrong. and it turned out good that i was.
i had in my head since last week to get them over to look at our posters and discuss them a bit.
i thought this would be a good way of showing them how their project is not too dissimilar from ours, and how, no matter what year youre in, it al comes down to the same basic thing: have a succinct and clear idea of what you are trying to say and turn it into a visual representation of those things.
i showed them our posters for a few reasons
- it was something a bit more interesting than a crit session of their posters
- they would get to see that standard of work we are producing
- they would get to see what kind of things we’re into as individuals
- i would get to talk to them about my work
thats the taking bit i was talking about, i kind of used them as a way of building my confidence in talking about my work cause id been shitting myself all day about it. if one of the industry people picked my poster, what would i say? so i wanted to talk to them about it, presentation-style, and feel confident that i could explain it and answer questions about it if i needed to.
and it worked, and someone did pick my poster, and i didnt choke at all! thank goodness!
phuong and brooke also explained their work and i feel like it was good thing to do, not too boring, but not too off-topic for them. they were curious and interested to hear about it, which was great.
for the last half hour or so we sat down and answered any questions they had about their tattoos. only 2 people talked about theirs but im pretty sure noone else wanted to. i kept asking “so…are you SURE you dont want to talk about yours?” because i felt we were being unfair by talking about some but not all. but i dont think they cared.
they have to hand in the project next week so i will be excited to go have a look at what they’ve finally come up with, and if anything we said to them had any impact. i kind of want to have some sort of celebratory thing with them as an end-of-project treat, but im not quite sure what, and how, and if we could get any money for it…

week 2, 28th april

wantingkneading — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 10:54:14 +0000

today i was missing yang- he was busy on a bronwyn booty call.
i had heard along the grapevine that phuong&brooke only had three people in their group so we all joined together as one big happy family. so there were three mentors and about 10 mentees, and no mentos (but phuong did need some extra.)
from last week i knew there was no way i could sustain the level of talking i did last week and so i tried to get the kids talking to us, which turned out really well.
we went around the table and each of them showed everyone what they had been doing. they mostly had quite a bit to say, and i think we did a good job of prodding them, asking questions, trying to get them to figure out why they had drawn what they had. it was pretty good, and most people had come up with some substantial ideas. i asked a lot of questions like “do you think if you were not here to explain it that people would understand?” and “do you think this really shows your personality?”
the main problem i ran up against was the star sign issue. it seems that david has really pushed them into exploring their star signs, which in itself is not a bad or misleading thing, but it looks like people have taken his advice a bit too literally, and are just focusing on somehow portraying their star signs. when they tae that route, it doesnt seem like its an exercise in getting to know themself and what they are into at all, it just seems like an exercise in making a pictogram that they are only mildly interested in. i asked all of the students who had taken the start sign route if they had read their signs description and agreed with it- most of them hadnt- they were just using it as a shallow symbol that didnt really express anything about them as a person, except what year they had been born in, or what month. it was kind of the same with their names. for some reason a lot of them thought that the key to their personality was their name- well, it ould be in some circumstances, but it kind of seems like a safe and boring way out of using their imagination, or exploring their ideas.
i was very wary of telling them that star signs and names were not a good thing (because i am sure in some cases they are) but i was sure to ask them all if they thought it was something that actually told the viewer something about them. and that if it didnt maybe they should think about what key aspects of the dragon (they all had the same chinese sign!) were relevant and try focussing on those instead of the actual dragon.
anyway, the session was successful, we got them all to talk and we got to know a bit more about them. i think they were getting pretty bored of it by the end, but so were we. it is tiring after a while, and hard listening to people talk. it is very hard to have a good response for everyone- i found i was struggling towards the end and particularly with the students who hadnt gone much beyond their start sign. is it my role to tell them that their ideas arent really very solid, or that their image doesnt really work? we decided in our training those things probably didnt fall into our realm but it is hard to not comment on those things when you are in the situation.
its funny, i feel kind of like a lecturer. i am trying to keep it quite casual but am constantly having to pull myself back from being too authoritative. it is hard to give friendly advice when they are looking for you for directive advice.
oh, and one more thing- i really enjoyed having the three of us here as mentors- it relieved the pressure somewhat and was great to have some different viewpoints on things. i think it was good for the 1st years to see us joking around and taking the piss out of each other- i think it helps to make it more casual, and see us more as peers than superiors.

week 1, 21st april

wantingkneading — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 23:23:36 +0000

i was really shitting myself about it all day, but i kept thinking i was just being silly. itll be alright once i get in there, things will be clearer, ill think of something.
but then i didnt.
we had organised ourselves into pairs, i teamed up with yang. we were told to walk into the classroom and pick a group. we walked into the classroom and there were bunches of 6-8 people sitting around tables. it was horrible. we had to pick which group we liked the look of, or which one was closest to us, or which one noone else had picked. i really didnt like this method of being assigned, it put a lot of onus on us, and made me feel like we were picking teams based on how they looked. it would have been much better if we had been given a group, if we had no choice. so, yang and i just kind of waited until most groups had mentors, and we just went to one of the last groups. it was embarrassing.
and then…
what do you say when you walk into a room, and sit down with bunch of strangers, who dont know you, are probably intimidated by you, who have no idea why we are doing this and dont know what to expect?
well, you stumble a bit and then think to yourself “well, ive gotta say something” and then you say something, whatever comes into your head.
it was very scary. we had no direction, no indication of what to do. we knew we were there to mentor them, but how do you start?
well, heres what we did.
we introduced ourselves (and forgot to get their names)
i told them what the mentoring role was (we are not here to be your teachers, we’re just here to hang out, pretty much, and give you some advice, help you when you need, and give you some contacts in 3rd year)
we asked them what their project was about.
they were very quiet, and we had to poke and prod them and try to get them to tell us what they had done so far on the project.
they asked us what we had done when we did the project and how we would change things.
we really tried to get across to them that they needed to figure out a couple of key things they wanted to say about themselves, and THEN work on making a visual representation of those things, because at least one of them said they would just start drawing and see what happened. it was hard for me because i really wanted to say “youre doing it all wrong!”, but i held back and said “well, something that works for me is first defining what i want to say, and then figuring out a way to say it. perhaps you could think about yourself a bit more and write down a few key points about your personality, and then go about finding a way to show those things”.
i felt like a lot of the time i was just telling them to be like me.
i also told them about mindmaps, and did a little sample one about me, telling them some things i was interested in, and telling them how even though they sound and look crap, they can give you some really useful insights- things tend to pop up again and again and those things are often the most important things. i also suggested they try writing a letter or a speech to try and introduce themselves to someone- it might help distill a few parts of their personality that they think are important.
it is interesting that the tattoo project ties in quite heavily with out poster project- in both cases we are trying to communicate things that are important to us- they are both personal explorations with succinct visual outcomes. it is a pity the poster is due in a couple of days, otherwise i think the mentoring could have really evolved it.
they had started talking a bit more by the end of the hour, but we had started running out of things to say, and everyone was getting a bit sick of hearing us talk.
its funny, i found we talked HEAPS, and i was exhausted by the end of it. i kind of felt like we were a chris and reinar lecture, but less directed. id like to try and talk less next week, and hopefully get to do consultations, of a sort. id like to talk to them individually instead of as a group, and see what each one is thinking.
it was hard this week cause we were new to it, and because they hadnt done much work there wasnt that much to talk about.
next week will hopefully be a bit more relaxed and productive.