Vanya Wryter Consulting Services

Tag: Education

  • How to Find the Perfect Mentor

    How to Find the Perfect Mentor

    Updated post

    When you’re busy building a business or career while juggling family and social life, it’s hard to find time for career-related training. One way to improve your knowledge is by taking a course or program. Another is to read books. Another effective way is to learn from a mentor who has already reached a level of success that you want to achieve. Finding the perfect mentor is not easy, but there are some tips you can follow to find the right one for you.

    Determine your mentor’s teaching style

    To learn from someone who has an online presence, start with an online search. Follow this person on their social media platforms, watch their videos, or subscribe to their newsletters. If they have free seminars or workshops, sign up for them. Does their teaching style and what they teach resonate with you?

    Whether your mentor is a well-known celebrity or someone you know personally, ask yourself if your mentor challenges you. For example, if you just became an entrepreneur and your potential mentor started a business six months ago, your mentor may not be able to guide you. However, if your potential mentor has owned a successful business for ten years, you have a greater distance to climb to catch up to that same point.

    Take action after you choose a mentor

    When you’ve found someone you like as a mentor, ask yourself if your mentor can motivate you to get results.

    Your mentor should inspire you to take action when you watch their video or teach you about a new concept. Their message should excite you so much that you want to learn and change.

    Their mentorship should have you thirsting for more knowledge about the same topic or have you madly taking notes. You should be excited about applying what they are trying to teach you as soon as possible.

    To get the best results from working with a mentor, have some goals in mind. The worst scenario is to be too general about what you want your mentor to teach you. If your mentor posts a lot of learning material online, focus on one topic at a time, not getting your hands on everything they have ever published. If your mentor wants to help you improve your skills, don’t set a general goal, such as, “I want to get better at my career.” Set specific goals and share these with your mentor.

    Choose a mentor who chooses you

    Getting feedback from your mentor is important. I’ve taken online courses from experts whom I respect as mentors. I understand their lessons, but I’m unsure whether I’m interpreting their learning points correctly.

    At a workshop or live webinar, choose a mentor who answers questions and provides feedback to participants. This style helps you to gauge if you understand what they teach.

    If you can schedule an hour with your mentor, have your hour planned in advance. Prepare questions to ask your mentor, or list what you’d like to improve on before your meeting. Set clear expectations and outcomes to show your mentor that you respect their time.

    For example, if you want to improve your presentation skills, ask your mentor if they can give you some pointers and feedback on the way you speak at a presentation. Be prepared to show them part of your presentation so they can provide you with specific tips and feedback.

    After receiving feedback, take some time to reflect on what you’ve learned. Was the feedback valuable? Can you use the feedback to make improvements? Did your mentor seem genuinely invested in you? A mentor who is genuinely invested will encourage you, tell you what progress you’ve made, be honest in their critique, and help you set goals for next steps.

    Keep moving forward

    Finding the right mentor is like an investment. You want someone who is approachable, excited about what you want to learn, and honest when mentoring you. It will feel uncomfortable and even painful to be told that you aren’t doing something well.

    In life, the best direction to keep moving in is forward. After you reach one milestone in the road, aim for a new one. Always keep challenging yourself and you will grow as a person.

    Key takeaways

    Finding the perfect mentor is a search for a two-way relationship. Your mentor should be someone you are inspired to learn from, but also someone who is excited about seeing your career grow.

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    How to Find the Perfect Mentor
  • Which aspects do you think make a person unique?

    Which aspects do you think make a person unique?

    Learning Languages as an Adult

    Each person is unique, especially in how they learn languages as an adult.

    Kids start from scratch, like a blank document. Adults already have plenty of files stored in their brain. By the time you’re learning a new language as an adult, you might have been exposed to it in random ways—through family, movies, music, or just hearing it while growing up. So it’s not like you’re a true beginner. You already know something, even if it’s in disorganized pieces. Here’s my experience, using learning Chinese as a second language. 

    First example: you might mix up the grammar of your first and second languages, and speak a Chinese sentence with English grammar. Oops. You sound like a weirdo. But you know how to swear perfectly because you hear the words in movies and spoken by friends who are fluent. 

    Second example: you’re a polyglot. You’ve learned a bunch of languages at the beginner level. So you walk into a store in Montreal and all you can think of is how to say, “How much is this?” in Japanese. Or you’re in Tokyo, and you can only remember how to say a sentence in French. Or, more frustratingly still, you’re in Tokyo, and you can read the kanji, and you need help because you’re lost. But you can only remember the Chinese pronunciation (not the Japanese) of the kanji on the street signs, making you both literate but unable to communicate.

    Pronunciation is another funny thing if you’re trying to learn a language that you’ve heard for years but don’t speak it often. You’re not native, but you’re also not a beginner. For example, in English, you go from “I want to learn it” to “I wanna learn it” when you’re speaking more fluently. But as a non-native speaker who’s been exposed to Chinese for years, I will say the Chinese equivalent to “I wanna learn it so bad.” I’ll say a sentence that they don’t teach you in classes – something you learn from native speakers – but my pronunciation is a tad off… not quite native, and not a beginner either. 😂

    So what makes people unique isn’t just what they learn—it’s all the random, imperfect stuff they bring with them while learning.

    Daily writing prompt
    Which aspects do you think makes a person unique?
    View all responses

  • What is the last thing you learned?

    What is the last thing you learned?

    I can’t remember the last thing I learned. I learn a lot of trivial things because I’m always learning.

    Learning is more than taking a course or reading a book. Sometimes it’s as simple as paying attention. When you go out, take note of things because you never know when you need them. Like when you shop, you notice what the store stocks, even if it isn’t something you buy. Later, when you have an in-town visitor, you can easily tell them where to find that specialty tea, or recommend a restaurant or store without hesitation. That tiny observation suddenly becomes useful knowledge.

    I’ve also realized how much I learn from everyday scrolling. YouTube or Instagram can be surprisingly educational, even if you’re doom scrolling. Maybe you come across interesting facts about space, history, or even the origin of a slang expression in English. 

    The same thing happens when watching a movie. When the movie ends, satisfy your curiosity and look up random things. How accurate was the movie? Was that character really that mean? Should you watch Part 2?  Do those animals really exist? You can spend hours going down a rabbit hole in your research. 

    Even weird, random facts count. Learning how to store your food properly in your fridge or pantry might save money and reduce waste. That’s practical intelligence.

    Learn a little at a time, then in the long run, you learn a lot. Knowledge compounds. Stay curious. Pay attention. Small lessons today become surprising wisdom tomorrow.

    Daily writing prompt
    What is the last thing you learned?
    View all responses

  • 4 Types of Companies for Remote Work

    4 Types of Companies for Remote Work

    Updated from 2023

    Remote work has been around for as long as we’ve had the technology, but 2020 made work from home (WFH) a household word. Now, many startup companies offer remote work as a way to cut operating costs. Without a physical office, expenses are reduced. Remote work also offers many other advantages to certain types of companies. Let’s take a closer look at four types of companies that offer remote work.

    1 Technology Companies

    Technology companies (tech) are great for remote work because they tend to have the latest technology. Tech companies include software development companies, IT companies, companies that sell electronics, artificial intelligence or computers, and website development companies. These companies have the ability for their employees to communicate through virtual meetings and communications applications such as Slack. 

    During the pandemic, tech workers were more easily able to transition to performing work tasks from home, since the majority (if not all) of their tasks were completed using technology. 

    2 Customer Service Companies

    Customer service companies that offer services via online platforms, such as chatbots, are suitable for remote work. Customer service workers must be familiar with technology and have internet access to perform their tasks. Many businesses that hire customer service workers have customers from multiple time zones. To provide 24/7 service to these customers, they hire employees from different time zones to cover a wide range of work shifts. Similar to tech companies, customer service employees can communicate with supervisors or coworkers with communications software.

    3 Education Companies

    Education companies and companies that provide online education are perfect for remote work. These companies provide e-learning platforms for companies and educators. The course content is designed electronically, and IT programming is also handled online. Educators who use these platforms to design courses or offer tutoring work remotely to provide the content. The education is available at any time to anyone anywhere in the world with internet access. This form of education is especially handy for people who work during the day and take courses to upskill at night.

    4 Creative Agencies

    Creative agencies offer remote work for those interested in graphic design, advertising, marketing, and content creation. Work is completed through online collaboration and communication tools. Some agencies hire employees from the same city, while others hire freelancers from other cities in the same country or around the world.

    Key Takeaways

    Work from home has become possible because of the collaborative platforms and communication applications that we now have available to us. Many startups start as remote work companies, saving on the costs of having a physical office. In particular, companies that work with technology, customer service, and education, as well as creative agencies are well suited for remote work.

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  • The Benefits of Reading Aloud to Kids

    The Benefits of Reading Aloud to Kids

    Reading aloud to kids has many benefits. It builds empathy, creates a love of reading, improves language and listening skills, facilitates important conversations, empowers the imagination, and is fun.

    I remember a day long ago when the teacher read a book aloud to the entire class. The story came alive when the teacher became the voices of all the characters, and hearing the reactions of classmates made the story interactive.

    As a kid, I certainly learned a lot of new words and how to pronounce them when an adult read a book aloud to me. This method of learning language was especially important for books in Chinese because, unlike English, you can’t rely on phonics to sound out the words. Learning pronunciation was almost like a guessing game.

    Most recently, I’ve seen programs that encourage children to read a book to a therapy dog. Many of the benefits of adults reading to children are transferrable to children reading aloud to pets.

    When you were young, did you enjoy listening to a story? As an adult, do you read aloud to kids?