I was never a big fan of mentor programs. Well, at least ones where mentors get automatically assigned to you. To me, that feels like going into elementary school and having the teacher assign you your lifelong friends: things will turn out much better if you just let a relationship form more organically.
I still fully support company efforts to promote mentorship and connect younger employees with more experienced folks as they plot out a career development plan. But the idea of getting assigned someone to relate to personally and professionally as you plan out some of the most important decisions of your life just never really made a ton of sense to me. Truly impactful relationships aren't formed because they are corporately mandated. They're formed because you genuinely feel drawn to someone's perspective and worldview, and you want to incorporate a little bit of that into your own. I have been incredibly fortunate and have always had older, more experienced people around me in every phase of my life for guidance or insight on something. Perhaps they saw it as mentorship all along, but I didn't. It just seemed like friendship to me.
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