Our institution does not have a formal mentoring program, although I feel that I have inadvertently been a mentor in the past. This has come in the form of our graduates telling me of incidents that had a significant impact in their career or changed their perspective - a senior resident who was told to step up to be academically better than her juniors so that she could teach them credibly; a graduate who could not believe she finally graduated after having attempted to get into residency 3x over the last 7 years; a nurse who I reprimanded on our first meeting due to poor nursing care later requested me to be a character reference because "I challenged him to be a better version of himself" after reprimanding him despite being a "privileged anak nang Diyos".
Coming from a generation that thrived on "tough love", "suck it up" and "never complain" culture, I need to have more empathy and to avoid comparing the current generation with "kami dati" attitude. It's also hard to not be judgmental esp when there are issues that seem to be trivial to me but seem to be catastrophic to the mentee.
