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Mentoring is a Mitzvah
Why you should commit to being a mentor, and some tips and techniques for making it easier and beneficial for both sides.
Seattle, May 1991: Grunge was the thing, radio station 107.7 KNDD had just launched, and a fresh-faced designer-wannabe was in town for the summer.
I’d recently changed my undergrad major from architecture (because math was hard and my handwriting sucked) to graphic design, and I was looking to act on the advice of my older brothers: land an internship, find a mentor.
After calling the usual suspects — big-name ad agencies and companies of that era — and getting various responses like “we’re all full up,” and “we don’t do internships,” and “how’d you get this number, stop calling,” my internship-seeking efforts connected me with a small and scrappy firm called ADtech.
The gentleman I connected with on that fateful day in the summer of ’91 was the owner and creative director. I had no portfolio, a semester’s worth of basic graphic design education, and only the vaguest academic idea of what “being a designer” really meant.
But he saw something in me — potential, passion, and grit that I barely recognized in myself back then. He brought me on as a summer intern, showed me the ropes, coached me through my first real-world client projects, and hired me as a full-time junior art director at the end of that summer nearly three decades ago.
Terry Bottiger was my first legit design mentor, and he changed the course of my life, forever and for the better.
Thank you, Terry.
Why is mentoring a mitzvah?
A mitzvah is defined as “a good deed one feels compassionately driven to do for others.” It’s a selfless act of kindness toward another human being.
Mentoring fits this definition because it’s a manifestation of servant leadership in its purest form — good mentors shouldn’t expect anything in return. It’s a way to pay it forward as a thank you to mentors past and present. I get a ridiculous level of fulfillment and psychic income from this work, but my mentoring efforts never come with a bill.
