Story Time: How I became a mentor and why I wish I had started sooner

Jeff Codes Things

Tl;Dr: This blog has nary a theme at the time of this post but if you only want CS stuff here is the link.

Beginning

My mentoring journey has started many times, in many phases of my adult life. Most recently, it started when a friend convinced me to sign up for a rewards credit card. Before that, it started when a co-worker put together a non-profit to teach high school students how to code and (thankfully for me) asked for help. Going back further, it began when I was a TA in grad school; helping people understand threat surfaces, stack discipline, and adversarial models. The time before that, and the earliest I think I could reasonably call myself a mentor, was when I took a job tutoring student athletes while I was in undergrad.

Each experience was rewarding, and each time my mentoring stopped with what seemed like a logical conclusion. Graduation put an end to the first two. Then moving away from Boston, where the non-profit was based, made it difficult to continue spending my Saturdays with the organization (and people who had become my friends after I moved there alone). That move in 2018 began the lapse in mentoring outlets I’ve had until now, when my friend sent me a credit card referral link.

The thing is I am a sucker for value. I was convinced of this card’s value proposition by the flagship benefits, but after signing up, there was a fringe benefit I was not aware of when I signed my name on the fabled dotted line. As fate would have it, the benefit waived the background check fee for a website that connects students getting prepared for college with people willing to guide them through that often daunting process. I did enjoy my past forays into mentorship, and I did not want to miss out on a benefit I was newly afforded, so I signed up as a mentor, filled out my profile, and forgot about it.

This happened on Tuesday.

Middle

Fast forward to Saturday.

Actually, before we get to that, I feel like I should mention that this week exists in the nebulous time void that is the year 2020. At risk of sounding self important: if this blog is to serve, in any way, as an artifact of the time it was produced in, I have to mention that at this point people have been locking down, reducing travel, working from home (if they’re lucky), losing their jobs (if they’re not), wearing masks in public, and social distancing all because of Covid-19 for over 6 months. As such, isolation is at record high levels. Introverts rejoice across the land, extroverts struggle to exist, and people like me who ride the line between introvert and extrovert have a lot of extra time to introspect1 and figure out which side of that fence they fall on.2

Without any clear delineation between work and home (and also being forbidden from spending time with friends) time begins to lose some of its meaning. Days slip into nights without notice. Months pass in what feels like the blink of an eye during most of spring, summer, and fall. The exception being election week which managed to span years. The modest amounts of human interaction I still had, were cherished as the treasures they were.3

With that context in mind: re-fast forward to Saturday. I am notified that I’ve been chosen as a mentor. A student is interested in some help with their college application essays. The interaction is a bit stiff at first. Those that know me can attest that I can be a bit dry. I am sure I came off as very corporate, going through the introductory messages that seem oh so scripted, even if they were not. When we made it to the “getting to know you” questions and made it further off “script”, the humanity of the interaction began to come out and the conversation began to flow.

I let them know that they were my first mentee, and they joked that they were “like a science experiment.”

Something I had forgotten, or hadn’t thought about in a while, was how full the world is with possibility through the eyes of a 17 year old. That perspective is inspiring in and of itself. Especially when considering the struggles they are going through. It is generally a hard age to be. At that age people are exactly on the cusp of making the decisions that will have the largest influence on the trajectory of their time spent on this planet. It has been a tough year for many people for many reasons. My new mentee had lost their job due to Covid. They mentioned anxiety and depression, an all too popular topic among millennials and Gen-Z. Of course, they also enjoy and do pretty much all of the things one would expect a teenager to enjoy and do, like comics, movies, video games, and dancing around the topic of romance. Consider the common ground established.

I realized fairly quickly that beyond being a chance to help someone be more prepared for college applications, it was also a chance to affirm this person in a way I would have appreciated at that time in my own life. I think the special thing this mentor/mentee arrangement affords is that there are next to no stakes in the relationship. We don’t have to be anything more than that and so it makes it easier to share things directly that might not come out so easily otherwise. In no time it felt like we were really getting to know each other.

It was frustrating too, talking to this “kid,” who had such clear views of things I know I did not fully understand when I was in high school. They want to be a civil rights lawyer. How’s that for a noble profession? When seeing unfairness in the world, I think most people agree that righting the wrongs done to others is a positive thing. Achieving justice is something I believe we all should aspire to, and this “kid” is planning on making it their life’s work.4

At some point between answering questions about different types of GPA and which schools they might consider applying to, we were just talking. They had recommendations for shows and music to check out based on things I had liked. This trade of media to consume in exchange for stories of my college experience and advice continued longer than either of us expected. It seems like a fair trade. I don’t know if it will help keep me young or accelerate how old I am starting to feel, but it feels fulfilling too and that is worth the time and energy.

They did ask about Computer Science too, since that is what I studied. After saying I did not want to try and change their mind, I offered the advice I had and I have included it here:

Think about different career paths while you are in college

Right before applying to college I decided I would pursue Computer Science instead of Pre-Med5 so long as the math did not get too hard. I am really lucky and math and logic come pretty easily relatively quickly to me, so the curriculum never got to the point of “too hard.” The side effect was that I was only ever on track for CS. I did not give myself much room to explore other fields while there was still time to truly consider them. If I were 18 again I would make sure I allocated some thought towards what I really wanted to do with my life.6

That said, I think my skill set aligns well with CS and there is a very good chance I would have chosen it for my career anyway, but it’s not something I can know, because I simply did not take time to consider other options while I was in college.

On Mathematics

There is definitely a lot of it on the path to a degree in CS. If you enjoyed proofs in geometry class,7 then that could be a sign that you might enjoy CS.8

On Computer Science

You basically learn tools for telling computers what to do… and computer’s are pretty dumb in some ways. No common sense at all. If you tell a computer to shoot itself in the foot… it’s going to shoot itself in the foot. The fun part is that 9 times out of 10 you didn’t mean to tell the computer to shoot itself in the foot, so you have to figure out where you said something that could have been interpreted as “shoot yourself in the foot”

One of my favorite CS quotes9 is, “To be an expert in Computer Science, one must first be an expert in their native language” Which basically means you have to have the language skills necessary to express very specific things in a precise way.

A common first intro to CS for kids (there are youtube videos that are quite fun) is “make a peanut butter sandwich” where an adult tells a kid to tell them how to make said sandwich. The catch is they only will do exactly what they are told. So they don’t understand “put the peanut butter on the bread” they understand smaller steps like “put your hand on the lid” and “twist counterclockwise.”

It is frustrating! But it’s also very rewarding when I figure out the problem and everything just works. Eventually it feels like you’ve successfully composed a symphony.10

Surviving the courses

First, read. Read the assigned readings. Read the documentation for the languages and tools you are using. Read (or watch) tutorials. Most of my early CS struggles would be resolved after realizing I had fundamentally misunderstood something simple, that was clearly noted somewhere I should have known to look.

Second, do not be afraid to get your hands dirty. Just try stuff out in programming languages that you are learning. That is where a lot of the learning actually happens, in the doing of the thing.

Third, try to explain it to your friends or other CS students. If you understand it well enough to explain it to someone else then you really have got the material down.11

Should I join a Math club (to help my chances of succeeding in CS)

Join a Math club if you enjoy being part of the Math club.

End?

In many ways this first interaction felt like my favorite parts of dating: the part where everyone is sharing and learning about each other and seeing another person for their interests and goals. As an added bonus it also has none of my least favorite parts of dating: the pressure to connect with someone so deeply that you each decide to spend literal12 eternity together.

This kind of interaction is entirely positive for me. My mind was racing after the conversation had ended and that is largely why I felt compelled to write all this down. I feel my experiences have more meaning if someone can learn from them or benefit from them even in a small way. Each of my previous experiences with mentorship had their end. However, with this new platform enabling the experience from anywhere, even during the height of a pandemic, I am hopeful that I’ll be able to continue mentoring as long as I find it fulfilling.

The best part, this isn’t just for me. Anyone can do this if you want to. Do you remember how clueless you were when you were a senior in high school? I mean, really think back to it. I was full on John Snow-ing it.13 Any amount of additional guidance is useful to someone who is asking for it, and it is a great opportunity to learn and give back a little to boot.

I guess those are my thoughts on it for now. I’ll update if I have any more down the line.14


  1. Is extrospecting a thing? ↩︎

  2. For the record, in the absence of regular social interaction I feel like I may be slightly more extroverted than introverted. It is the first time I have felt this way in as long as I can remember. ↩︎

  3. During this time I was single, very alone, and talking to lots of strangers on the internet, but not in a sad way, more of a funny “I am totally fine, please don’t feel sorry for me” kind of way. ↩︎

  4. With a healthy understanding that they are currently 17, and these plans could change at a moment’s notice. ↩︎

  5. The popular option among my moms side of the family. ↩︎

  6. At this point my mentee asked me what other paths I would have considered, which threw me for a bit of a loop. Maybe I’ll turn into another blog post. Do people enjoy reading these? ↩︎

  7. Shout out to Mr. Kjolhede who ordained Josh and I the “Killer B’s” back in 2006. ↩︎

  8. Hypothetically speaking, of course. ↩︎

  9. I don’t know who said it and I’m paraphrasing so I have no idea how to look up who did. If anyone can help me attribute this I will be eternally grateful. ↩︎

  10. This feels like too favorable a comparison, but it is nice when it all comes together ↩︎

  11. This one can be applied to pretty much any field, just replace CS with your field of choice. ↩︎

  12. Figurative ↩︎

  13. I didn’t know anything ↩︎

  14. I think I may have become a little footnote-happy somewhere in the editing process. ↩︎

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