In-depth Questions 

1. What has been my most difficult mentoring challenge so far? Why?

The most difficult mentoring challenge so far is the uncontrollable COVID-19 outbreak causing me and my mentor to cancel meetings. My project requires face to face interactions and a large meeting space. The place my mentor and I usually meet was closed indefinitely due to the COVID-19 outbreak. Some other meeting places I found such as the drop-in dance room offered at Pinetree Community Center was also closed. It is hard to replace meetings and doing things together in real life with an online call. My mentor and I will continue to look for strategies to overcome this challenge. In the meantime, I asked my mentor to film herself demonstrating the entire choreography so I can practice by myself at home with the video. This way when we meet again, my mentor will correct movements and it will save time.

Usual Meeting place

2. What is working well? Why?

Everything else is working out well. My mentor and I have been having very productive meetings. There’s always progress being made every time we meet, I am not having a lot of problems memorizing movements. I like the mentor to mentee relationship we currently have right now. My mentor seems to care a lot about my project, how my blog posts are going, and what things we can improve together as a team. We email each other often checking in, and seeing when is a good meeting time for each other when we meet next time. I think my mentor and I have gotten closer and more comfortable with each other while meeting and communicating weekly.

3. What could be working better? How can you make sure this happens?

Something that could work better right now is the progress. The progress is actually very fast right now. We have been working very efficiently. But because of the outbreak, we couldn’t meet for over two weeks and I am slightly concerned about the amount of time we have left since we never know when this outbreak will end. I would like to learn the choreography as soon as possible. This is just to prevent rushing through the choreography just before in-depth night. I can learn the whole choreography then practice more if there is more time. We could even start planning the presentation for the in-depth night with the extra time. To make this happen, I will practice and learn as much as I can at home and when we manage to meet, we will go through what I practiced together. If we do find somewhere to meet, I would like to spend a bit more time than usual. We usually meet for 1 to 2 hours. If my mentor can also extend the meeting time, I would like to learn and practice for 3 hours to make up for the time we missed. 

Here’s a quick preview of what my in-depth looks like!