Curtin Alumni Mentoring Program Launch earlier tonight. was looking forward to this since i signed up. but then this week happened - plenty of coding, blind styling, and data sanitisation work.

hence rocking up mentally drained. but i felt better .. after a few glasses of Solo (no, they had no coffee)

gist of the night was a "speed mentoring" setup - where us mentors had 15 mins each (a good timeframe for this, it turns out) with a mentee. this makes it the second "speed dating" style networking event, structured well, i've attended this year.

i think i'm starting to warm up to the format.

we were supposed to cycle through 4x for the night, but after my third, i made a quick dash to the toilet .. but came back to no mentee. so Amanda sat with me instead - which was the first time we officially spoke in person.

after that though, i joined the next table to continue chatting .. and got to meet another mentee, thus filling my "quota" for the night.

what started out with an "oh balls, can i do this tonight" ended with me feeling good. i enjoyed it. i was in my element. and what helped was the many faces familiar to me - from the Alumni team, to the people who recognised me but i know them so-so, to my .. uhm, fellow "Oscar nominee" for best School of Nursing patient roleplay.

anyways.

the one big takeaway for me was that mentors and mentees are two sides of the same coin - we BOTH can learn from each other.

to all the mentees .. feel free to reach out anytime. i'm always up for a chat.