Mentor-Mentee - My Turn!

Last year, as third years, it was our turn to be mentors to the incoming first years. I was pretty keen--my mentor was absolutely useless and never talked to me after the original mentor-mentee happy hour. I was going to hang out and be friends with a first year, and tell them all about vet school, and give them lots of notes and tips and resources.

I was Rudolph and my mentee was Santa.

Here's me. I did have a red nose, but I had long since given up trying to keep it on. My favourite part of this costume is not shown - I made a super cute fluffy deer tail out of ribbon and sewed it on the back. The necklace of bells and the antlers each took a really long time, even though I don't look like I spent any time on it.

I found my mentee and bought her a drink, as is the custom. I talked to her a bit, but she seemed like she would rather be left to talk to her friends so I did. I talked to heaps of the first years while I was there, which was really fun. It was their first week and they had no idea what they were getting into, and so many of them were shy.

I realised that we, as third years, knew everyone in our class. We could look at any person and know instantly if they were first or third year. The first years, on the other hand, hardly even knew each other. I think that's why they tended to cluster in little friend groups--they only knew a handful of familiar faces, and didn't know who else was in their class! After all, that's what it was like for us when we were first years.

Since then, my mentee contacted me a few times, and we are facebook friends. I gave her some files on a flash drive, in a very secretive exchange of moving the flash drive around between our mailboxes. We seem like pretty different people, though, so we never hung out.