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My assigned objective is to think about what it feels like to learn on the fly.

It’s quite nice.

We have a certain form of autonomy, no? We get to train ourselves! There is a rough curriculum, but for the most part, I’m training myself. I’ll have an idea on what I wanna learn, and guess what, you get to go learn what you wanna learn.

Of course, we are mentors as well, and we’ll work on projects. Yesterday, I was matched with my project mentor, Mo, and I’ll start meeting and planning that project. What’s the project? We’ll be looking at building out the Sites @ Grinnell platform, Grinnell’s free web hosting platform for students. No one really knows about it, unfortunately, not the art students who could showcase their portfolios, the econ majors who could network, or even the CS students who really should start their website.

Hmm, I guess I’ll need to allocate more hours in my schedule, then. It seems to be a big project. I guess I’ll just have to learn more about it. I haven’t started a project of this scale, and am curious how it’ll all play out. We should frame it as an opportunity to stretch my mind, just a touch of challenge. I’m sure it will work out.

He was very right.

I’m not sure what to expect for my first day in this position at the library, as a Vivero Fellow. Ostensibly, I’m to help people with digital media questions… and help them with any questions from digital courses at Grinnell…

It does appear that the mentoring space is rather tranquil right now. Rather, silent — very occupied, but not with people. We have so many mentors. I wonder where our mentees are. My friend came down here to check on his 3D printing and I accosted him and ensnared him into conversation. Well, the other way around. “Hey look, well so I’m working as a Vivero Digital Mentor. We’re all mentors here, and well if you need any help…”

I was not, however, prepared for the most foundational of questions.

“Well what do you guys really do?”

What do we do!

I’m not quite sure. Yet. I think the yet is helpful, so that when I submit this blog for review, my supervisors will not be affronted. I don’t really know what we do, yet. I’m supposed to be training, and there’s a training schedule already set up that we are to follow (this blog being part of that).

It would be wise, though, to figure out what we do. We provide mentoring services for all sorts of digital media.

“First day on the job, huh“. Yes, indeed.

One minor success: I did get the fellow to set up his website. Grinnell hosts this service for students– free websites for anyone who just signs up — and no one knows about it. Quite unfortunate. I managed to get the dude to fill out the form, and hopefully, he’ll have a website up eventually. A portfolio. I’m working on mine… as we speak.

Portfolios should be handy, especially for these CS-type peoples.