I have been mentoring a young man from hunter college since his freshman year and the relationship has been growing. i have always been a beneficiary of the superberb mentoring of individuals---now that i have my BA( lolol)-- i would call collegues as well as friends. I think mentoring creates a network that young men such as myself feel the need to be part of. When i was in high school, my mentor was Oliver hinds who was an employee of HBO. oliver had gone through the same things that i had gone through, being an immigrant himself. He taught me about stocks, financial planning, politics and other discussions better left out from the blog (lol). I would sit down in his office and i would always see the wall street journal and wanted to know why he was always with that paper, now i know. However, it is the thought that here was a man who was successful and whose career was going great teaching me all these things and giving me access to a world that otherwise i would not have known about. Oliver and i are now friends.

Mentoring, especially urban youth, is very important and crucial to their success. I have often told my mentee what i did to go through college and the jobs i worked at and the connections that i made. He is doing the right things.

We do see the need for mentors in our society because they provide a road that those who aspire to be like them can follow. Some of the greatest minds in the history of mankind where nurtured by the most obscure events; imagine what a mentor who knows what the world is and has passed through it can do for a young man growing up. Tiger woods said that, when you finish junior high and go to high school you should help the junior high students, from high school to college you should help high students, from college to professional or further education you should help the college students. I think when we create a society like this we initiate our own development. It was to my amazement that when i was at the career office at hunter i was told that in the future i was a perfect candidate for the school mentoring program while at the same time i was also looking to men and women who are successful in my profesion for guidance. This is what builds success. Success is linear and at least for me i always have to look up to somebody greater, somebody i respect professionally and intellectually.

So, I challenge all those out there without a mentee to go out there and volunteer to mentor young people; and im assuming you yourselves have greatly benefited from mentoring or simply having role models--- most of these kids, of which i was one, need to have that role model because for them it might be the only person who tells them that they can do more than what they think they can! When i walk into my dean's office at my college, i feel as if the world is my stage, i feel as if i can do anything.

This is what we need.. New York is a crazy city... GO OUT AND GET A MENTEE!!!!MENTOR SOMEBODY---or if you want, you can look at it this way, consider yourself a PHD holder in a subject called life.. go out there and fight for tenure people!!!!!!!