‘In mentoring insight arrives quietly and stays’
Mentoring is crucial in our Longford Scholarships, alongside financial and employability support. Scholar Fedor, doing a Creative Writing degree, and his mentor Alistair began meeting last year. Fedor reflects on what their relationship has given him.
I wonder if mentorship is most often imagined as advice given, direction offered, and experience passed to an unquestioning and grateful mentee. My experience as a Longford scholar has shown me something gentler, and far more enduring: that the most meaningful mentorship can be calm, patient, and quietly affirming.
My first meeting with Alistair began with his gift of a book about my hometown. Such kindness, forethought, and foresight. He is a retired senior lecturer who taught English for over 40 years at Sussex University. His knowledge of language, poetry, novels, and the literary canon is extraordinary, but it is never explicit, and not once impressed upon me. When it surfaces, it happens organically. Perhaps a novel is mentioned, not as instruction, but as invitation.
Our relationship, on his instigation, is filled not with advice and guidance, but with a space he creates. Conversations are effortless, unfolding without urgency or pressure. Alistair’s mentoring instinct is not to ‘fix’ anything, nor to rush me toward conclusions. He listens, and this space allows ideas to arrive imperfectly. Then he might ask a question or offer an opinion that compels me not to reassess, but simply to think harder.
‘Safety is where growth takes root’
Life, inevitably, intervenes. I had to cancel a meeting at short notice due to illness. I apologised, embarrassed and typing with a touch of guilt. In truth, I expected disappointment, or some light complaint about breaking plans already made. Alistair met my apology with grace. He accepted it fully and without fuss, and reassured me that, if I need him, he is always there and he was looking forward to our next meeting. Nothing changed. No warmth was withdrawn. No sense of a debt incurred. That kind of understanding matters more than it might sound. It creates safety – and safety, I’ve learned, is where growth takes root.
I’m a mentor myself, and here more than anywhere else Alistair’s influence is apparent; not in what he does, but in what he rejects. My time with Alistair has taught me to hold back, to listen longer. I see more clearly when not to give answers, even when I think I have them. I’m reminded that mentorship is not about shaping someone in my image, but about making room for them to become more fully themselves.
‘In every conversation, hierarchy is entirely absent’
What may surprise you, and what demonstrates our trust, is how little we talk about my university work. On his insistence, we leave it alone, because he has faith in my academic ability. Coming from anyone, that would be encouraging. Coming from a Cambridge postgraduate, cloaked in a lifetime of literary learning, it is an extraordinary vote of confidence – especially to a creative writer still learning, still questioning, and sometimes still unsure.
Our conversations cover whatever two men like to discuss: family; books we love; politics and culture; ideas that won’t quite settle; language as something alive and unruly. We talk about becoming – not academically, but as people. In every conversation, hierarchy is entirely absent. My ideas and opinions feel as intellectually valid as his, and equally welcome. This is why Alistair is not simply my mentor, but my friend. Friendship does not dilute mentorship; it deepens it. Honesty comes without performance and uncertainty without defence. In that shared space, insight arrives quietly and stays.
‘Not directing but walking alongside us’
The Longford Trust understands something fundamental about mentorship: that it is not about directing my path, or that of my peers, but about walking alongside us. To me, Alistair embodies this ethos. He reminds me, by example rather than instruction, that wisdom shouldn’t crowd a room. Alistair gives me space to breathe, to think – and, I hope, in time – to offer that same space to others. For his kindness, wisdom, and friendship, I am deeply grateful.
Would you like to be a mentor with us? Find out more and email mentors@longfordtrust.org