Each One Teach One

I started a new adventure yesterday. My former preceptor has a new midwifery student who just joined the practice and I have sort of found myself taking on the role of mentoring her through the apprenticeship process.

It's weird how I feel a kind of obligation to help, but in a very good way. It reminds me of how totally grateful I was/am to T for helping me survive as an apprentice. As the senior student, she always made herself available to help answer my dumb questions or give me feedback about how to communicate with the midwife. With almost everything about the process being confidential (client privacy, midwife privacy, not wanting to "gossip" about the practice, etc), T became the only person I could really discuss births with in detail, and it was so helpful. Being available to help walk the new student through the process feels like I'm kinda giving back in some way.

Being a resident at Casa put me in the teaching role for the first time, and it was definitely difficult at first. Fortunately, I ended up working with a great group of interns who were all very respectful. It was incredibly humbling when we said good-bye to each other and they each told me they were grateful for getting the opportunity to work with me. They said some really awesome things, and it was definitely a powerful experience. *sniff*

As a result of my intense respect for my mentors, I don't take this task of mentoring lightly. I love that I've acquired enough experience and knowledge to be able to pass it on to someone who is genuinely interested in learning. It also helps me figure out what I don't know and makes me more motivated to learn that much more.

Anyway, so yesterday this new student and I got together to review the module on hemorrhage. It brought back memories from early last year when I was the student being grilled on the same module. The midwife was tough on me then, and I hope she'll be tough on me again this fall. Most importantly, though, she believed in me and my ability to be a great midwife, long before I believed in myself. As I try to figure out this whole teaching/mentoring process, I hope I am able to show that same type of faith and confidence in students so that they can go on and help someone else. Yea for mentoring!