The advice giver I want to describe was an old architect. He was born in Britain and raised in Germany, fitted for our stereotypes of both places: well-organised, reticent, and always following the book.
I am sort of his apprentice when I got a chance of internship in an international architecture firm and was assigned to him during my last year at college. I am totally a new fish and know nothing about the real workplace and the line of work. So I just do all the menial chores for nearly every one, buying coffee, ordering the lunch, or copying some files. I felt underused and thus quite regretted about my choice of internship at the first place. He is a busy man with a tight schedule, always on the go for business, I didn’t have many opportunities to have some talk with him though I was desperate to want to.
But He did manage to spare some precious time and mentor me. Sometimes meet him in a cafe for a chat. And I believe both we enjoyed the mentoring exchange, partly because we always had pleasant conversations, partly because he really enjoyed the mentoring process – you know, seeing someone grow and succeed under your guidance is pretty awesome. I used to be a careless kind of girl, young, curious, never bound by rules and always trying to think outside of the box. Perhaps that’s the reason why he liked me. After being late for our appointments twice, however, he gently pointed out how annoying my behaviour could be. ‘Don’t ever let someone wait for you, kid, it shows disrespect and might put your career in jeopardy. I took that in mind but didn’t realize how important it was, until one of my colleagues was actually fired for showing up late at a client meeting and losing a deal. You see, sometimes you think 2 or 3 minutes doesn’t matter so you don’t pace up when you are still a distance away from the meeting place even though someone is already there waiting, but this little detail might be interpreted as disrespectful or arrogant by others. Gladly, someone I deeply respect pointed that out, which might just have potentially saved my career.
