Four Mentorship Archetypes

It occurs to me that undergraduate programs at universities at least try to make this distinction. It's fairly common to assign each student a general advisor who helps them pick courses and manage requirements, then pass them off to a departmental advisor once they choose a major.

Granted, it usually doesn't seem to work very well, which supports your uncertainty. My experience is that general advisors mostly help bureaucratically, by making sure undecided students progress towards graduation while they explore topics. Which is obviously a bit short on real-life analogues, since beyond food and shelter there aren't many predetermined 'requirements' shared across all goals. But it at least has me wondering about the possibility of seeking a different style of mentor. Perhaps someone who's moved through several fields, or someone in a potentially-interesting domain chosen less for excellence than for their ability to give you an efficient taste of the field? If you're as far as a tentative goal this becomes fairly easy, as with undergrads doing research work or prospective law students doing paralegal/law-office work.

I don't have any great answer here, though, and I'd really like one. There are several things I'm interested in which seem to either lack this sort of pre-entry mentorship or lack any experts at all. If my desired skill is "the intersection of X and Y", but I can only find experts in X or Y... it looks like I'm rather on my own.

I think a big part about mentorship is actually that part. I have been fortunate to have had fantastic mentors, people who have looked for opportunities for me to explore things. They didn't just ask me what I wanted to do. They found out and helped me get there and I've never once regretted it.

In every case, though, the meaningful help has come from someone who knows me - either because we talked shop at the gym, played football or board games together, or because they were actually formally my manager (or CEO or whatever). So I think it's unlikely anyone could _really_ help you online with this particular problem.

In attempting to replicate my mentorship experience for someone else, I find that this is easier with some people and harder with others. I haven't yet quite captured what it is, but I think at least a small portion of it is the will to progress in an exploratory manner and iterate rapidly on that. i.e. you don't actually find out what you want to do so much as you aim for a safe but challenging opportunity in some area that has clear success criteria and then you see if that specific opportunity thrilled you.

...who is great at figuring out what they want to make progress toward?

when driving on ice, and start to slide, the ways to take control / stabilize the car is to first let it go wherever it wants to go (i.e. remove yourself from equation), analyze that, and then do something if needed/possible (well sometimes u can).

decisivenes, or self-sufficiency are also skills. Or, "coming back is not same as staying" - was this written in Amsterdam somewhere?

(and the cheshire cat said it doesnot matter which way u start if it does not matter where u want to go.. u still reach somewhere. if..)

so.. if u dont know where-to go / progress.. do u want to go/progress ? why? and why that? :)

What has meaning to you? What tugs at your soul when you can't sleep? Where does your mind go between tasks during the day?