ABSTRACT
The thing about “being” a mentor is that it's not really something you can “be.” “Being” a mentor is really an entanglement: a situated, co-constructed, temporary intra-action (Barad, 2007), a becoming-mentor that also already includes becoming-mentee. One is not mentor, one becomes-mentor/ mentee (Deleuze & Guattari, 1980/2018). Always coupled, always transitioning: smooth space becoming striated, and striated smooth. In my own life, I have been/become student-and-mentee/mentor, teacher-and-mentor/mentee, teacher-and-mentee/mentor, administrator-and-mentor/ mentee, student-and-mentor/mentee. These roles fold over each other now, the relations still there (residual, sticky) even when no longer codified or institutionalized. Mentorings-and-menteeings, folding over me and through me, pulling together relationships and moments and roles in a fluid, fractal entanglement.
