What Do You Want… from your Mentor?
This WDYW hits very close to home. Thank you for indulging me by reading it.
“I am the living legacy to the leader of the band…”
Lyric from a song by Dan Fogelberg that was released in 1981. That was right around the time I was graduating and my relationship with Dr. Gary Gumpert was elevating from student to friend and, ultimately, to mentee.
I first encountered Gary in the first large lecture I ever attended. There were more than 300 students in the class, held in a huge lecture hall. Introduction to Mass Communication. Gary emerged from a door at the front of the room and immediately began challenging us. He used a mammoth multi-media screen to illustrate and illuminate his discussion, a system that would soon inform and shape my career.
During that first term, I was concerned about having a paper that I had written for him returned with no grade. I waited after class and asked him why he hadn’t graded it.
He explained to me that if I didn’t feel the need to put much effort into it, he didn’t feel the need to grade it.
I had worked three consecutive overnights on that paper and protested.
He pointed out a typo on the first page, then another, saying “see that?”
I was astounded. “Those are just typos,” I said. This was back in the days of typewriters. You may remember those…
“Exactly” was his reply. He then asked me, “Are YOU a typo?”
Seeing I was confused, he clarified by explaining to me that “the quality of your work is the clearest reflection of the quality of you.”
That began a relationship between us that would last for almost fifty years.
To Think
I credit Gary for, in that moment, teaching me to think. Not how to think. To think in the first place. To use my brain. To invest maximum value into everything I create. To look more deeply into everything to find the deeper, truer meaning.
As my mentor, Gary constantly challenged me. Beyond challenging me to think more critically, and evaluate with greater attention to nuance, he challenged me to seek out and enjoy all life had to offer. Cooking. He was a gourmet chef who just had to have a Viking stove for its critical temperature control. Baking, especially bread. The exuberant glee I learned to experience when punching down a dough comes straight from his baking board. Music. Wine. People. Photography. Video. The written word.
In Gary’s multi-media class I learned production skills that I still use today in my webinar work. In his television production class I learned how images, light, motion, and so many other elements can be combined to create extraordinary visuals.
But what Gary brought out most in me was my true and abiding love for writing. While I spent several decades as an executive in information technology companies, I don’t think I truly came alive until the day I became a full-time freelance writer. My need to eventually do that was launched when Gary informed me that he considered my writing to be superior to his own. That moment still lives in me.
How Did We Get Here?
The challenges never stopped. That is perhaps the most important role a mentor plays in our lives: To challenge us.
Just a few years ago I was talking with Gary, online of course, about my dissatisfaction with the work I was doing. Part of the problem was that it was the same work I had been doing for fifteen years and I wanted to do more, to go further. I just didn’t know in which direction my further lay.
Gary asked me, “Who do you write for?”
I explained that I wrote for clients who needed more compelling content to help drive the success of their businesses, and that I also wrote for publications that served the information technology industry, which was driven, in part, by advertisers and sponsors.
His next question stopped me. “When do you write for you?”
Snarkily, I replied that I don’t pay me to write.
He then suggested that this was the root of my problem. I needed to write for me, write about what was important to me. Write about the things I wanted to share with people, without influence from advertisers, sponsors, clients, or anyone else. He pointed out that all of his writing was about things that mattered to him. Our media ecology. The role of mediated communication in the growth of cities and municipalities. How everything communicates. Gary had studied under Marshall McLuhan and became possessed about truly understanding media.
And this, dear reader, is how we got here.
I discovered Substack and learned that it was a platform on which writers could market and sell their content directly to readers through subscriptions, rather than publications who were dependent upon advertisers. I saw in this an opportunity to truly write for myself with the hope that my work would find an intrigued audience that saw value in it.
Substack is a place where I can fulfill my mentors challenge and write what I want to write, about things that matter and that can be truly valuable to my readers.
Saying Goodbye
When seeking a mentor, my best advice is to find someone who just doesn’t buy your bullshit. Someone who drives you to be honest with yourself, no matter how much it may hurt. Someone who shows their love for you by constantly challenging you to grow and learn. Someone who may see you even more clearly than you see yourself.
Someone who is never afraid to tell you the truth.
A few months ago, Gary insisted on spending some time at his home in Cotignac, France, deep in the Provence region. He also travelled to several other countries to continue to give papers at conferences and other gatherings. Just last week we were talking about the next book we wanted to work on together, and the difficulty he was having completing several papers he had committed to.
This week, Gary’s health took a turn for the worse, and he passed away on November 6, 2024, at the age of 91. A Jewish child of 1930’s Germany, he had escaped from the Nazis and found refuge here in the United States. To the very end he remained a lifelong learner, constantly striving to learn more and teach more. To share more. To enjoy more. To challenge more. He literally never stopped.
And so, when people ask when I plan to retire, I explain that “retirement” is one of the few words that frighten me to my core. That they will find me slumped over my keyboard someday. I cannot for the life of me imagine ever retiring. My mentor, my role model, my beloved friend has shown me the way I want to live this last chapter of my own life.
All of this is not only what I wanted from mentor, even though I may not have known it, it is also all that my mentor gifted to me for most of my life. And for that I am eternally grateful.
Goodnight, Gracie. Sleep well.