I have been blessed to be surrounded by some amazing mentors and colleagues through out my life.
I had a favorite high school English teacher (not my favorite subject, though) who challenged us with the power of words. We had to create our own dictionary for one assignment. He gave us a limit of 500 nouns, 500 verbs, 100 adjectives, and 100 adverbs. Plus we had to be able to define the words in our dictionary words with only the words that already existed in our our word list.
Each word became precious, not to be wasted. I thought since I was creating my own language, I was going to omit any negative terms from my dictionary. But the end of the project, he would then give us writing assignments on different topics and we could only use the words in our dictionaries. My dictionary was lacking. Try explaining why water goes the drain on way in one hemisphere and then the opposite way in another with only words like "love, goal, and sunset."
No longer did I take it for granted that there would always be another word for my use. One girl, Marisa C., had the word "go" and her definition was "to p." Marisa was really good at creative writing!
Other mentors I have meet along my journey of professional life. Some are flamboyant and would never be missed in a crowded room. But one of my favorites is a quiet, unassuming man who would sat quietly in the back of the room and could have been easily missed.
When I finally got to talk to Mr. Quiet, I found out he was a great source of information. He had built a tremendous business and was using his expertise to take his skills into new niches.. very successfully I might add.
I got invited to spend the day with him recently inside his office and see what he has created. Enjoy the video of our day.
Dr. Ginger Bratzel