First Meeting with Mentor

Well, we arranged and have now had our first meeting (yesterday) and agreed that we could work together. In the name of privacy, I shall refer to my mentor as Karen.

Karen and I went through the things that we needed to do to get started. Now I'm not the best at following protocols and filling in forms. My partner thinks this is strange given I love organising information. I guess I'm all about organising information "my way"...

Anyway, fortunately, Karen seems to be on a similar wavelength and wasn't too stressed out by the fact that I hadn't really done any of the forms that I was supposed to have done before our first meeting.

Out of the meeting came a few actions (looks I'll be a little busy):

Action: D - complete the mentoring agreement document and forward draft to K (did it this morning - one down!)
Action: D - get written confirmation of CILIP's recognition of my MLIS in order to pursue "Pathway 2" (did it this morning - two down!)
Action: D - get written confirmation of the guidelines that I'm to follow in this process (did it this morning - three down!)
Action: D - set up folders (structured according to CILIP categories) on work and home computers to capture bits and pieces of work over the next year to put into portfolio
Action: D - trawl through home computer files for suitable evidence to put into portfolio (specifically, things from last job and from Diploma)
Action: D - start a journal to capture ideas and thoughts as part of this process over the next year (hey hey - you're reading it! four down!)
Action: D - prepare a timeline (project plan?) of activity based on the requirements in the Guidelines (the idea is that as we go along, we can add the training schedule and the regular meetings that we'll be having - a picture of where we're going)
Action: K - find out about the Chartership Group at her organisation and "get me invited"

So that's it. I've got a few more things to do before this ball is well and truely rolling (setting up the folders, have a trawl and putting together a project plan) but it's off to a start - properly this time. I need to inform my employer that I'll be pursuing chartership. Normally, I would have done this earlier and in fact, I did inform my employer way back when I registered but I have since changed employers and after only a week and a half in the job, my boss went on leave for three weeks...so this is all going to be a bit of a surprise. I'm not worried, though. The organsiation and my boss seem to be pretty reasonable and so will no doubt be happy to support me through the process. He's back on Monday so I'll give him a day before we have a little "catch-up".

Now that I've written about the journey to date, I'll start focussing a little more on the thoughts, experiences and ideas aspect of this journal.