Bound for Kuala Lumpur

10:30 Pacific Time 26.05.09 Auckland Airport

I am waiting for my 12:50 flight and thinking about what I need to be to be a good mentor for Student Voices and person in general.

I need to listen.

I need to be more intellectually and emotionally flexible so that I can live more in the moment (i.e. be available). I need to move from quick understanding (passive) to quick debating (active). I need to be emotional agility to better respond to others. That is, discard any emotional baggage, so that I am not living in my head, so that I can look people in the eye and receive a compliment, notice and respond when somebody needs me and listen to and consider criticism to ask questions right there.

I’ve slowly come to realise that this availability is required for me to understand where I stand with people. That is, if I gauge the meaning of a relationship on an absolute scale, I will fall short of a correct measurement. I need to compare how people treat me versus how they treat others to gauge how they regard me, if not at a similar time (best comparison), then over a longer observation period to try remove the confounding day-to-day variation. In other words, I need to consider my relationships with people (simplistically 3 entities: me, the other and the connection) in a context of a network. That is, whatever they feel towards me has to be viewed simultaneously with their other connections, because they are constantly being pulled in those other directions.

I say this because I worry a lot about what others’ (whom I respect) think of me, but have little idea, because I am good at explaining away any positive signs of respect or affection. And with this sort of "weakness" in mind, I want to formulate a way to examine the world for feedback without imposing my need and without becoming self-centered or naive about the idea of self-improvement.

I can't wait to meet these students. I can't wait to meet the other mentors and the 'new' TIG Education programme manager and I can't wait to see Mike again! I worry about my relevance. I worry about my social skills, given my current passion/obsession is not really a topic that anybody else has an interest in. But - get on with it! Just do it!

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