Blog 1: Summer Mentorship

Literal:

•      For most of the Summer I was with my family working in Utah and while I was out there I wasn't able to contact Miss Melogno for help finding service learning, and I couldn't find anything out there that actually pertained to my topic. There wasn't any places that worked with solar power where I was. So, I decided to wait until I got back to California to do my mentorship. Ms. Melogno actually found a great mentor for me who works with Cal Poly, his name is Jack K. (562) 274-5750. He works with the Cal Poly solar cup team and is very knowledgeable about the competition. The only problem was that I was only here for the last two weeks of summer and we were only able to meet once during that time, so I only got 5 hours of my mentorship done.

Interpretive:

•     I think we require mentorship as part of the senior project because it is always great to learn things from someone, with a lot of experience. When we work with someone who does these things for a living we get a lot of good advice and a different perspective on our project topic. Plus, if we have an expert available throughout the school year we are able to ask for help with any problems that we have with our presentations or anything like that. In the case that you are looking for a career pertaining to your senior topic you can even ask your mentor in depth questions about how to get a career in that field.

Applied:

•      Right now I am simply trying to schedule another workshop with Jack, to try and get more hours and some more information about my senior topic that will hopefully help me build the solar canoe in the best way possible. If I can I would also like to find another mentor as well, just to get more opinions or some tips that Jack might not know about.