Like me, many people doing the CPD23 things will be registered for CILIP Chartership and have a mentor. However, I have never been a mentor myself. I suspect that I'm probably in the majority there. My experience of the mentoring process to date has been fairly limited. I admit that I am making my way through Chartership extremely slowly and find it hard to get motivated. My mentor also works in academic librarianship but at a University rather than my own sector of FE. He has recently moved away though and, although I said I would be happy to continue the mentoring relationship via e-mail, I'm not sure if I've done the right thing. I said in earlier posts that I am a champion procrastinator and not having to talk to someone face-to-face and attempt to justify why I've done nothing will not do me any good. It's easy to ignore an e-mail from my mentor so maybe, in my case, finding a new local one would be better. I'll maybe give it to Christmas, see how I get on and then make a decision.
My mentor did give me some useful tips and advice on the chartership process and the kind of things I should be including in my submission. He was especially helpful when I was getting confused by the criteria that CILIP have so there is definite value in being able to talk to someone, share ideas and find solutions to problems that you might be having.
I'm not at all sure about asking someone to be my mentor outside Chartership though. I think that sets it up too formally. It's good to network and establish professional relationships but actually asking someone to be your mentor is an extra step that I'm not sure I'd ever take.
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