So, there's been a few Mentor-ey things happening over the last few weeks. Figure I'd best be blogging, then!

The big one was the Holistic Learning seminar. I'll be honest, I was suspecting this one might be a little on the boring side; you know, a bunch of people talking in dull voices about dull subjects, maybe the worlds most boring people talking about about making learning exciting.

Gaf's Amazing Mentor Bloggerarium of Stuffs does not
condone this sort of behaviour. Yes, really. 

 But while there were a few dull moments (which lead to some of the most productive poetry writing I've done since getting back; five stanzas under the pretense of note taking [just don't tell Kerry]), I was actually pleasantly surprised. For one, it wasn't a purely UWN event, meaning that we got to meet all manner of folks involved in education from all over the shop. Secondly, being a CELT/CDEL thing the information given was actually practical and useful, rather than entirely theoretical. Third, us Mentors actually got to give a student perspective (which seems sort of important, really), and fourth, the free lunch was "bitching", as they say in my home ghetto.

So, how does one boil a really long seminar on complicated stuff down to the bare bones (and preferably without inane jargon)? Well, essentially it was about an expanded curriculum. As it stands, we humble students pay out a small fortune, and in return we get a degree. Simple enough concept.

However, these days a degree isn't much on its own. Chances are you'll need additional things, like a MA or a PGCE, even a PhD. At the very least you'll need a whole host of extra-curricular stuff, and sometimes you'll even need the extracurricular stuff to get on to the relevant post-grad course.

Basic stuff, and not exactly news. What is news is that institutions are looking at addressing it, and some already are to a degree. Things like guaranteed work experience and increased access to other relevant  CV-worthy stuff for one, but of particular interest to most of us was the idea of putting support in place for explaining how the stuff we already do can be put into terms potential employers may like. Sure, some faceless bureaucrat might not be interested in how you blew every Wednesday evening watching anime with J.A.M.S, but they might well be interested in how you managed to work as part of a team to organise multiple trips to London expos. Or had to deal with assorted departments to book rooms every week. Or managed the society budget. Or had to operate the technology. And so on.

Heck, as Mentors we already have something pretty damn cool to put on our CV, but with a little careers advice we could go into job interviews knowing how to milk it for all that it's worth. Handy stuff to think about it; hopefully it'll all be integrated an highly visible for future students, but in the meantime it's well worth thinking about now...

Restructure Meeting

So, just got to attend a meeting about the recent restructuring of the university, and the effect it's had on everyone. Was anyone actually aware of said restructure in any real detail? 'Cause while I knew something or other had happened, all the info I was getting fitted into that sorta vague, impending-doom-of-Glamorgan category.

So yeah. Turns out their was a restructuring, and now the support staff are a fraction of their former glory. Sorta like the British Empire, but without the dubious history (or maybe it does have a dubious history. These were some shady looking characters, and I'm certain that it can't be a coincidence that they arranged the tables into the bloody Cerberus logo. It was all a bit Illuminati, if I'm honest, though the dysfunctional Marvel version at best).

I will continue to post Mass Effect pictures
until you learn more about Mentoring.

Anyways, random I'm-Up-Too-Bloody-Early pseudo-rants aside, this is essentially the reason you may have noticed an increase in the fields of Cock-Ups, Chaos and Carnage (the three C's, seeing as no business meeting is complete without that sorta thing). Students not knowing what they're doing, where they're going, what their timetables and book lists are... essentially, it appears that all this is down to the restructuring.

Which would have been handy to know before, really. In my experience stressed out students are a bit easier to placate if they understand that actually, something has gone wrong. It's not them being useless, it's not that this is the system that is actually in place for dealing with this. It would have occasionally been handy, such as when we were calling people, to be able to say "Yeah, sorry about that. You see, there's been a recent restructuring to make the Uni a better place, but while it's adjusting it's a bit chaotic. Looks like you got hit by that that, so lets see if we can't fix it," rather than "What? Huh. Yeah, that's weird  Yeah, let's see what we can do."

But we can do now, which is nice. And frankly, whilst all this might well have impacted our jobs somewhat, we've gotten off lightly. But you might want to give Kerry a hug, or pretty much any member of staff you see who looks in danger of being strangled by their own temple.

Also, go watch Stressed Eric. It will make
you a better person.

Anyway, a proper feedback report thingie will no doubt appear on the Mentor Portal* at some point. Until then, I hope you enjoyed my incoherent babblings.





* Does anyone else really like the term "Mentor Portal"? It's like we have some sort of actual, extra-dimensional form of teleportation at our disposal.

"Wow Gaf, you sure got to class early today! Don't tell me the hellish form of mental, social and emotional torture they call the bus was actually on time today?"

"The bus? Ho-ho, I don't use the bus! No, the Mentor Portal sent me directly through Limbo to the front gate. I can't stop though, for wherever evil rests, we Mentors must be there to haunt it's dreams. Mentors Assemble! I am the Night."

Blog Training

So, today was the blog training that most of you have no doubt already attended. Always good fun learning to deal with the technological demands of the day to day life, and to celebrate I've now got a couple of bonus features on the old blog. You can subscribe by email or Google Reader, search the blog, or look at the pretty fish to distract yourself from the inane content.

We also learned about Google's Project Glass. I want one.

Did I mention that I want one? More sepcifically I want one that combines the functionality of Fallout 3's VATS system with the style and panache of Mass Effect's Garrus Vakarian.

Go ahead, punk. I'm streaming all of this as we speak.

Random, Largely Pointless Update

So, looking at my shiny new calender I can see that I've actually got no pre-planned Mentor stuff 'till Thursday, when I'll be training to use Blogger. Sort of like I'm doing now, admittedly, but possibly with an end result of more shebang. But in the interests of not letting this thing get stale, I shall now produce a Random, Largely Pointless Update.

This is Random. You may need to read more bad 90's X-Men.

So, what vaguely on-topic Mentor shizzle could I possible have to write about? Well, it's struck me over the last few weeks that I've already been using the last load of training we had quite a bit. I'm sure lots of us have had moments where we've thought "that bastard is totally an 'A' person", but I've used the more in-depth stuff too. Despite none of it actually relating to actual, proper Mentor work.

I've managed to help diffuse a rapidly escalating situation between campus security and a band they were trying to throw out. I broke up a fight outside the Meze. All of which were points where I've stopped and thought back to the old training, and gone "ah-ha!"

Well, more or less. I may have been drunk on both occasions. But mostly I've just been talking to bloody hundreds of new people. Between actually having to talk to new people at the training and the training itself, I suddenly seem able to grasp the concepts behind dynamic social mechanisms, without really understanding how. Which, when you think about it, is a very shiny thing.

Hopefully I get in on the mental health training soon, because the downside to all this is the rapid realisation that everyone else on this planet is almost as batshit, window-licking crazy as I am.