Mentor

 

Are mentors always good? For so long, I probably would have answered ‘yes,’ as would many other people. But now, I’m starting to see that this is not necessarily the case. A mentor is just someone who guides you: it does not have to be positive guidance though. Luckily, the mentors I have had so far have been greatly beneficial not just to realize my own interests, but also to see possible career paths.

However, mentors are not always so beneficial. In Purple Hibiscus, as of how far my group has read, it seems like the father is the mentor to his daughter as she is essentially being “guided” by his expectations. But these expectations create an artificial sense of what is right and wrong in his daughter. For instance, she understands that, according to her father, religion is important, but she does not truly grasp its implications in her own life. Simply put, she is just being conditioned to do what her father thinks is appropriate without any individual thinking, as individual thinking is often punished in her household.

Finding a mentor to help you achieve goals and gain new perspectives is definitely worth doing, but it is just as vital to be conscious of who is your mentor, what their incentives are, and what you will attain from this interaction, so that you will not unknowingly go down a potentially harmful path.