End of first season review

[Ynwe]

So the first season of the mentor program is drawing to a close soon. I would like to hear from the participants the overall thoughts. Any criticism or idea is welcome! For example, did you like how I distributed the students  via one single centralized PM which all mentors were part of? Are there things I could have helped you with? How do you feel after being part of the program for a season? Do you see anything that can be improved? And most importantly, are you willing to continue next season if someone new shows up?

[Rymdkejsaren]

Well, for my part things have worked nicely, though I've had a grand total of two sessions with my three mentees.  

But the ones I had were an improvement on previous efforts, and it was my impression I helped. One of my mentees from this season is still in touch but has been busy, the another seems to have disappeared after handing me a match to review (still have notes for that!)

 

I'm not a huge fan of PMs and part of the reason I gave you all access to this forum was to avoid that. Mass PMs get messy and send of a lot of email pings, and I like to keep that to a minimum as long as I'm an active greensuit becasue I can't avoid checking them in case there's a fire. So we need to handle that in here next season.

 

Depending on how my current mentees feel about moving forwards with some more sessions, I may pull myself from the pool next season.

[Ynwe]

I can see the point of avoiding mass PMs, I just thought it was an easy way to distribute students effectively while considering the mentors wishes. Could do that via forum, but that probably would slow things down a bit.

[Bouffon]

I think it worked out fine for me. I was (and am) a bit unprepared to but my thoughts, ideas and intuitions of good coaching into words but my pupil's game has improved even if there are no winning results to show for it yet. All the obvious mistakes are corrected and he finds roughly the same flaws as I do from his own matches; if one can spot a mistake, one can fix it. It now comes down to the iterative process of playing the game, making mistakes and correcting them time and time again.

 

My own focus should be on translating my previously mentioned thoughts, ideas and intuitions into those also previously mentioned words. It is hard to impart anything you are unable to speak of. Hopefully I am a better mentor in the future.  

 

And yes, the PM/email spam was a bit distracting.

[Rymdkejsaren]

4 hours ago, Ynwe said:

I can see the point of avoiding mass PMs, I just thought it was an easy way to distribute students effectively while considering the mentors wishes. Could do that via forum, but that probably would slow things down a bit.

 

You can still @ people to get their attention. But that has the advantage of not happening every time someone replies.

[Ynwe]

Ok, definitely something I will change for next season.

[Juriel]

Not sure what the best way to allocate students would be, likely just a thread here so people see the selection and can pipe up. Group PMs are so disruptive. 

 

The actual experience has been entertaining for both me and my trainee, chatting over Discord after our respective games every week. I just type out what I say out loud when viewing the replays by myself, with Snipping Tool screenshots pasted in. So not really extra work for games I was going to be viewing anyway.