I would love to see how Matthew's trial run worked out. I'd love to have him post right after this to say that it was super successful, but the silence from the western front tells me it probably petered out about 6 weeks after it started.
It was not super successful, but it was not a crash and burn.
I think the main problem is a mentor really needs to see the young stage manager in action, and outside of an internship or employment, that is difficult. It ends up being a situation where you offer more generic advice based on the students self assessment on situations. And that can lead to problems. Because I didn't know the people that well, I found myself pulling back on how I would normally push someone if they were my student or intern, or I new the entire story.
What we forget is the the entire SMNetwork it self is a mentor to young stage managers - and we should continue to put efforts into that. We are already mentoring each other.
What a younger stage manager maybe looking for is that golden ticket, someone to take them under the wing, and help them quickly up the ladder of success . . . I am not sure a lot of us are in the position to or would want to offer that.
I think what may be better for an internet forum is to foster and advertise members who may be open to offer more personal and offline advice on such things as resumes, choosing a school, interpersonal work issues, etc - and offer a much shorter time commitment for that relationship to play out. For example, I would be willing to work with someone for a week on putting together a resume, but committing to six months for a more generic internship is more problematic.
Also, as a working stage manager you often have staff you are already responsible for mentoring - so besides just your 60-80 work load, you may have day to day mentoring to do.
I think there are also trust issues - I would say maybe 10 people in this network know me or have worked with me. What would make me a good mentor over someone else? Because I have a lot of posts online . . . maybe not.
I would strongly encourage members to reach out to other members, meet for coffee, network on their own, and start to form personal, real world business connections. By meeting people, you can start to develop your own opinion about individuals, who you can trust, who you want to go to for advice, etc. (I try to make time for each and every "young stage manager" who wants to get together for coffee . . . ).
Those are my thoughts.
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