The Benefits of Mentorship

Family, Dating and Relationships, For Christian Working Women, Military Christian Woman
December 2, 2015
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Last year this time a young woman reached out to me after finding my website. I’ve kept in contact with her and am pleased to see that she is now pursuing her dream of becoming an attorney. This is the second article I’ve featured on her and this young woman is really a lovely young lady. Through my interactions with her I’ve come to understand what the benefits of mentorship are – for both the mentor and the mentee. Something I believe is missing from generation to generation is mentorship. Mentorship – when done right – saves the younger person a lot of consequences and time lost from their life due to bad decisions. Unfortunately, though, a lot of people are uninterested in mentorship. And I’ve found that it’s mostly because they feel jilted by the fact that no one mentored them. Therefore, why should they teach a younger person what no one bothered to teach them? Better yet, HOW do they give something they never received? Well, although I can’t physically or professionally mentor this young woman due to geographical differences and career paths, I do enjoy keeping in contact with her and being pleasantly surprised by her growth. Check out my blog interview with her below:

What influenced your decision to pursue a graduate law degree?

Growing up as a child, I realized a glaring imbalance in the society. I felt a need to put my self in a position where I could advocate effectively for women, fine tuning my focus on abuse on women in our society and also to help unveil the power of self worth to budding young women.

As a young woman who recently successfully completed college, what were some of the biggest challenges you and other young women face today on college campuses?

Well, I think it is finding a good balance and mastering the art of putting every department of our lives in the right perspective. Prioritizing if you may. Looking back I realize how much time was wasted on worry about things that really didn’t matter and undermining the ones that did.

I believe that mentorship saves lives. Who are some of the most influential mentors in your life?

Honestly, I do not have one person whom I call a mentor. I do what I call “virtue picking”. When I see something about someone that is worthy of emulation and I learn from him or her.

What would you say to older Christian women about how they can effectively provide guidance to your generation?

Basically, life has really changed. The things we as young women face, are totally different from what they experienced in their time, so in order to be able to communicate, they really have to put in some work to understand the new order and embrace the idea that the system is only going to get more and more complicated. I think there should be more efforts to bridge the gap. Frankly, sometimes it looks like it is we against them. Older Christian women will have to stop criticizing and pointing fingers at the younger generation. In my opinion, if they have something to point at or criticize then they have failed as people who should be ready to mentor nurture and constructively redirect.

What do you do for fun? (This is important because a lot of young Christian women believe that Christian life is boring for fear that “they can’t do anything fun”!)

I love to go for walks. I occasionally go to the movies. In the summer, I do waterparks a lot. My girlfriends and I also go on spontaneous trips, which are always fun! and oh I always love to have a good laugh.

Selassie Ami Torkornoo is an aspiring Attorney with a passion to emancipate abused women from both physical and mental turmoil by proclaiming the freedom which comes through Jesus Christ and the Gospel. She is also working on her first book. Visit her at www.retrointrospections.blogspot.com