Mentors

Mentor (Merriam-Webster definition): "a trusted counselor or guide"

Every time I see that word, I instantly picture someone who's significantly older than me. The traditional and typical mentor is someone who's had more experience in a certain aspect, making that person much wiser, knowledgeable, and therefore eligible to teach and relay their learned experiences to a younger, curious student. Since there's this sort of gap between the student and mentor, I often fix my perception of a mentor to be similar to a teacher or a coach since they generally fit all aspects of that image that my mind comes up with.

Even though I knew a mentor can be a friend, I always still applied those characteristics and pictured an older friend I was acquainted with. When we wrote about our own mentors in life, my brain first went to think of adults that have taught me. Answering the prompt, however, was a bit rough. As much as I learned from them academic-wise, I couldn't think much other than that. Quiet as I am, I remembered that I barely interacted well enough with these older people I thought of.

I took another route to the prompt when I was reminded that it could be someone like a friend. I thought of the people I talk to the most these days and instantly had these flashbacks of random conversations that were actually influential, and I just didn't realize it at the time. Cheesy and simply said, I really am grateful for the people that surround me. I tend to be stuck looking at one perspective, but I've slowly come to realize that wise people around me help me widen that view and give me lots to learn and be curious about in life.