Mentoring and Team Building

Hello. My name is Katherine.
I am currently taking a class where I get to mentor in my chosen career path. I am really excited about this class because I'm going to learn what goes in the world of jobs and careers. I'm mentoring for theatre. I have chosen a performing arts pathway for my career. I hope to be a performer, director, or theatre teacher as my career. I will be mentoring under a middle school theatre teacher. I am also going to co-direct a musical with another person who is mentoring for theatre.

When trying to sum up myself and my philosophy of life, there are three quotes that first come to mind.

"The best and the most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched, the must be felt with the heart."-Helen Keller
This one applies to me because I believe people should lean on how their heart feels and what their heart tells them to do. I always listen to my heart.

" One can never consent to creep when one feels the impulse to soar."- Helen Keller
This one applies to me because I don't want to settle for anything less than I deserve. I want to be great and live life to its fullest. I do not want to settle for second-best.

"The most exciting things that happen in our lives are before the age of 12."-J.M. Barrie
I like this quote because I believe childhood is the most valuable part of our lives. What we learn and experience as a child will stay with us forever. Children can do much more than what people expect they are capable of doing. I believe that they can best exemplify that by participating in the fine arts, such as theatre.

One of my first experiences through my mentorship has been the Lapdog Retreat. Lapdog uses team building activities to bring big groups of people together and develop leadership skills. I learned through Lapdog that I am a stronger creative thinker than an analytical thinker. I also learned how to identify people's strengths and weaknesses and how to use that information to make a job more successful and efficient. The activities taught me how to step back and let another person be a leader. I also learned that having many differences within a group of people can be a blessing once you learn how to use them to your advantage to get a job done. Not all of us think the same, but learning how to work together despite our differences is very rewarding.

Synergy is defined as the interaction of two or more agents or forces so that their combined effect is greater than the sum of their individual effects. I defiantly saw synergy among our group at the Lapdog retreat. The best example of synergy was when we had to put three big puzzles together. All of the puzzle pieces to all three puzzles were dumper into a huge pile in the middle of a ring of rope. We were only allowed to say 100 words once we were inside the ring.
We had small groups of people go in to sort out the pieces, and then we tried to put them together. We worked in silence only using gestures to communicate. Whenever somebody would clap, we got outside of the ring to talk about what we should do next. It took about 45 minutes until we were done putting the puzzles together. We worked well together and cooperated with each other to accomplish the task of putting the pieces together.

I hope to get a lot out of my mentorship. I hope I get to learn how to use my theatrical talents in the real world of jobs and careers. Hopefully, this will prepare me for the future and competition in the hunt for jobs.