As a younger professional, I was blessed with a number of mentors. I found these women through my involvement in internships, volunteer positions, and professional organizations. These mentors taught me not only how to be a professional, but how to navigate the business world. I’m grateful that now, even as an established professional, new mentors appear in my life just when I need them.

These days, I find myself feeling like a proud mama bird. I’ve had the great privilege of both employing interns from and participating in a formal mentoring program at my alma mater, and this month I will watch four amazing mentees of mine graduate, leave the nest, and move on.

What surprises me most as a mentor is that I learn just as much as I do as a mentee. I have learned that there’s not that much difference between 40 and 20. At 40, I can be as unsure of myself as any 20-year-old, and sometimes these 20-somethings have it way more together than me. By asking questions that stumped me, they taught me that I can’t ease up on my own education. And they reminded me that I have valuable life experiences to share. My mistakes have become their cautionary tales, although I am sure they will all repeat some of them anyway; tis human nature and some lessons have to be learned first-hand. Our relationships have transcended the professional and are now friendships, and I am proud to have had a hand in making these women who they are and who they will become.

Teach something and learn something. Share what you know, and grow as you do.

Tanzi Merritt has made a career out of words. She spent several years working as an academic reference librarian and a community college library director, teaching students how to locate and evaluate information as well as to choose reading materials purely for pleasure. A career shift landed her in the position of sales and marketing coordinator for a technology consulting company, where she translates things written by software engineers into words that the non-developers of the world can understand. In her free time, she sits on a number of nonprofit boards, reads, knits, crafts, listens to (and sometimes makes) music, obsessively watches documentaries, buys art, and frequents lots of local restaurants and craft breweries.

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