Searching for a mentor
 

Hello , I saw that the motu mentor mailing list is merging with this
one so I'm writing directly here . For the last moth or so I've been
active on the community (discussions,bug reports, brainstorm ,
blueprints) and I've gotten my way around it , but it's still very hard
to get ideas through or know where to address them . Also it's still
hard to get how parts of the system ( development communication) work .
So I hope someone volunteers as a "mentor" . Nothing special , I just
don't have anyone in the community to ask some simple (or not so simple
) questions , and get an idea of how things really work here.


For me : I'm a medical student from Bulgaria (2nd year) . I've been
programming since high school and can work with C++ (some OpenGL) ,VB
and QB (don't really matter :D) . I've done something like a 3D engine
and have an AI project so I've done quite a bit of coding , but haven't
worked with large codebases that others designed and user oriented
stuff, so I'm not very oriented how to work with the codebase here .


Best regards ,
Petko Ditchev

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Searching for a mentor
 

On 02/09/2012 09:05 PM, Rob Oakes wrote:

Hi Petko,

On 2/9/2012 11:49 AM, Petko wrote:

For me : I'm a medical student from Bulgaria (2nd year) . I've been
programming since high school and can work with C++ (some OpenGL) ,VB
and QB (don't really matter :D) . I've done something like a 3D engine
and have an AI project so I've done quite a bit of coding , but
haven't worked with large codebases that others designed and user
oriented stuff, so I'm not very oriented how to work with the codebase
here .

Where are you located? Do you currently live in Bulgaria?

For most things, working through the Internets is a good way to
collaborate. However, mentoring is not most things.

The best mentoring relationships I've had were in real life. When going
through medical school (I'm an engineer with an MD, not a physician), I
met once a month with a formal mentor that the school assigned me. We
would usually go to a coffee shop and he would ask me how things were going.

The meetings were never particularly long, but, they were always
helpful. I could ask about school, family, and other stuff. Because we
were in the same room, these exchanges were always more effective than
if we'd been chatting through email or via phone.

I've found this to be true of students I've mentored in programming. We
set up a time to meet every so often (maybe once a month, or a couple
times of year), and we talk about things they've got going on. It might
be a programming problem, or a question about the industry, or thoughts
about how to balance family/life. Again, the meetings are never terribly
long (maybe 30 minutes), but we get a lot more done than we would via
pure email exchange. (We do that too.)

I say all this, because, you might be better off trying to find someone
locally. You might look into the local Ubuntu groups for your area,
there's usually a programmer or two who hangs about. If you can't find
one for Ubuntu, you might look into a group for your favorite languages.
Here in the states, we've got groups for Python, C++, Qt, and others.

If you're just looking for someone to help navigate the (ridiculously
confusing) Ubuntu community, you might try IRC. They can help somewhat.
But, nothing beats finding a mentor who you can actually talk to.

Cheers,

Rob Oakes
I agree about your views on effective mentoring , but I haven't seen
active bulgarian ubuntu members, and ,yes, I mostly need help navigating
the community (and at some point understanding the way of the program
from the programming IDE to the repositories ) .


PS:sry,forgot to add the ubuntu-motu to cc the first time

Petko

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