Mentorship

 When I was in Secondary One, during the end of the year, I was chosen to be mentored by one of my Secondary Two Senior, Spencer. During this time, we already had spent a significant amount of time together during training and our NPC preparations. 

When he was my mentor, not only did he focus on my skills, he also tried to focus more on building my trust towards him and also focused on how to make me a better scout and person. After every scout training, he would always take the initiative to ask me and a few other scouts out for dinner and sometimes during the weekend, he would also play some mobile games with me to relieve stress as well. Outside CCA, spencer would also be more than happy to help me with school work and other troubles I faced in school. Overall, he made my scouting journey a lot more bearable and he is a very good friend I have today that I am very appreciative of. 

Spencer and I :)  (Photo Taken before Covid-19)

Ever since then, I realized how the presence of a mentor can affect and improve one's life significantly. In Secondary 3, I took Lucius as my mentee. At that time, Lucius was a secondary 2 scout and I observed that he was a very curious and hardworking scout that had the potential to be a great leader in the future. As such, I took him as a mentee as I wanted to share what I learned from my scouting journey and also develop him as a leader that others could rely on. It was during the Circuit Breaker period when I asked him to be my mentee so I mainly wanted to focus on his soft skills by trying to get him to interact with the Secondary One scouts

As the months go by, I began to help him with his progress and proficiency badges and also talked to him outside of CCA. Sometimes, I also help him with his schoolwork too!

Here's a reflection done by Lucius

I got to know Ignatius when I was sec 1. Back then I was just childish and immature as I honestly hated scouts and wanted to leave as I was hoping to enter a sporty CCA. I would just whine every training and mostly just use eye power until I was sec 2. During the circuit breaker period, even though the seniors encouraged us to finish our progress schemes, I took their advice for granted and just decided to focus on my HBL and play games. Until there were online activities that could be done to help me with badges and at the same time help the unit greatly. Again, I did not want to do it as I thought it would just waste my time. Till Ignatius encouraged me to take part in every activity possible and told me to finish my badges during this period as I would have an upper hand compared to my batchmates. I then decided to help the unit by completing some activities at the start such as cooking a meal, sharing about what toys I collect, which helped me gained my cook and collector proficiency badges. But what motivated me to complete 8 proficiency badges was when Ignatius texted me at midnight, asking if i was willing to be his mentee, I was very happy and immediately agreed to it as I felt that it was a big role to me, especially that hardly anyone has a mentor, which shows how much Ignatius trusts me. Throughout these 3 years with  Ignatius, my fondest memory with him was also during circuit breaker, when we would be attending zoom calls together with other scouts from other countries or from other schools. My favorite zoom was the overseas one as I saw how Ignatius interacted with other scouts from other countries, which helped me have a better understanding of scouts and helped me interact with them better. Through these 3 years with Ignatius, Ignatius has taught me a lot of things that I would never forget, such as how to become a better leader. An example would be when I was a sec 2 and I watched him teach us and the sec 1s how to do pioneering. Watching him teach us as a role model, not only did I learn more about knots, but how to properly interact with the juniors like not being strict all the time, or pumping them all the time, but instead interacting with them by putting ourselves in their shoes and making the activity a more enjoyable experience, and not a horrible experience and make them hate scouts. I have also applied what I learned from him this year as I'm a "leader" already in my patrol. Using the attributes I learned from him, as we were playing the "stretcher race" game where we had to first build the stretcher, then race with other patrols to see who's stretcher would finish the race first, our patrol finished building rather fast and our stretcher was safe to use. Unlike the other patrols, most of their knots were very loose and their stretcher wasn't approved by ma'am. This was a great accomplishment to me as I felt proud that we could complete this activity using the other seniors and my teaching. In conclusion, Unlike other seniors, Ignatius doesn't slack but takes pride in what he does in anything he does, even simple stuff like teaching us how to clove hitch, he uses the most suitable approach and does it in an efficient way. He is also very diligent and is a great leader.

Now that I am stepping down as I embark on my Venturing Journey, I am very proud to see how far Lucius has come, from the lazy, quiet junior to the reliable and hardworking senior and leader he is today. Recently, he also just became the new Patrol Leader of Catfish Patrol and I am very happy to see all his hard work pay off for this. Although I have already stepped down, I would still continue to look out for him and be willing to be the senior that he would talk to.

Lucius and I :)