Gaf's Amazing Mentor Bloggerarium of Stuffs

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...