{"id":2749,"date":"2017-12-08T22:28:35","date_gmt":"2017-12-09T03:28:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.butler.edu\/wits\/?p=2749"},"modified":"2018-01-13T14:31:55","modified_gmt":"2018-01-13T19:31:55","slug":"let-be","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.butler.edu\/wits\/let-be\/","title":{"rendered":"LIVE AND LET BE"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Volunteering as a mentor at Broad Ripple is one of the best decisions I have ever made. I remember the first few weeks of classes made me a tad nervous. I think that any person worth their salt should be nervous whenever they take on such a complicated role. We all come into these situations with personal demons and doubts. I wondered whether I could become a worthwhile mentor, what a worthwhile mentor is, whether it was one of those things someone either has or doesn\u2019t have. I worried over the empty pages I\u2019d been staring at for months. I simply didn\u2019t know whether I could classify myself as I writer anymore, let alone as a writer that could help anybody with their writing.<\/p>\n

After working a little over half of this semester, I can say I\u2019ve matured as a person in subtle ways I wouldn\u2019t have without my kids. I realize now mentoring is not what I first predicted. Half of the students I\u2019ve encountered don\u2019t hangout with us to write. Which is okay. It\u2019s even fantastic. The fact of the matter is some of the students who are there need a mentor, not a writing mentor. They need an older person whom they don\u2019t feel obligated to talk to, whom they can just talk with. Most of the time writing isn\u2019t the point.<\/p>\n

However, my writing has improved immensely as well. I\u2019ve learned to be less serious when I do get the chance to write. I learned this from a boy named W\u2014. He wrote one of my favorite lines the other day when our group wrote corny love letters for fun. He wrote something like \u201cYour eyes are like pools of pure blue water and I\u2019m afraid that if I lose myself in them I may never come up for air.\u201d This kid has style and substance in his writing that I\u2019ve felt is often lacking in mine. Working with him has made me realize that often times when I have writer\u2019s block or when I feel held back for some reason that it is simply myself. I stop myself when I\u2019m writing because I am over worried about the outcome. W\u2014 doesn\u2019t, he just lets himself be himself.<\/p>\n

I think that I could sum up the major lesson I learned during these few weeks I\u2019ve had as a mentor as sometimes you need to just let be. If a student doesn\u2019t want to write there is nothing you can do to make them write. Sometimes you need to just let them do what they need to do. If they want to talk, talk to them. If they want to sing, let them sing. If they just need a place to be themselves, let them have a place to be themselves. In other words\u2014stop thinking about what others can learn from you and focus on the you can learn from others. The writing will follow.<\/p>\n

Justin Woodcock is a junior English major.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Volunteering as a mentor at Broad Ripple is one of the best decisions I have ever made. I remember the first few weeks of classes made me a tad nervous. I think that any person worth their salt should be nervous whenever they take on such a complicated role. We …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":624,"featured_media":2753,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[15637,37038],"tags":[],"coauthors":[265091],"class_list":["post-2749","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-broad-ripple","category-bu-tutor-reflections","column","twocol","has-thumbnail"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.butler.edu\/wits\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2749","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.butler.edu\/wits\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.butler.edu\/wits\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.butler.edu\/wits\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/624"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.butler.edu\/wits\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2749"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.butler.edu\/wits\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2749\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2764,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.butler.edu\/wits\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2749\/revisions\/2764"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.butler.edu\/wits\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2753"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.butler.edu\/wits\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2749"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.butler.edu\/wits\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2749"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.butler.edu\/wits\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2749"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.butler.edu\/wits\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=2749"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}