I just got around to reading the latest edition of Esquire, my favorite magazine, which happens to have a big focus on mentoring, and a great section in which famous people talk about their own mentors.
Then the other day I picked up my son Luke, a junior at Eastern High School, and he told me about a new project he was embarking on for a class. He had to do something, anything, for 30 days. Since he’d just read an assignment on “The Diary of Anne Franck” he made the independent decision to keep a journal, staring Oct. 14.
These two occurrences were not a coincidence, in my view. And since I’ve been struggling to generate copy and keep my writing chops in working order, I’m going to do the journaling project with Luke and share with you. The two of us plan to write something every day in a journal here on LouisvilleKY.com. Maybe Luke will learn something from his Dad about writing. I’m sure I’ll learn plenty.
It’s a pretty bold thing for Luke to do, and I’m proud of him for agreeing to do it. He’s got that Redding family determination and focus. I think he will keep it up. Luke is plenty curious about the world and has opinions about what goes on around him. The two of us spend time discussing the current events that come up in class discussions, and I appreciate the teachers at Eastern who encourage students to think about real issues, whether it’s the latest disruption at a JCPS school or why Alison Grimes won’t say who she voted for in the 2012 Presidential election.
I promised Luke I’d present his opinions here unedited, though I’ll offer suggestions. That’s the mentoring part. You’ll get his voice, his opinions, his observations. He’s both excited and challenged by it. I’m glad to have a great project to do with him. The last time I really did something like this with one of my sons, his older brother Nick and I vowed to eat at a different pizza joint every Thursday — we called it the Pizza Club.
So we’re doing this. Starting now. I hope you’ll follow along and tell us what you think.
LUKE’S FIRST ENTRY – OCT. 14:
Today, 1st period we got a free class since our teacher was out, me and 2 other friends got to talking about our future and college mainly. One asked both of us where we would like to live when we got our jobs. I said Seattle for that’s where the Google HQ is and I have always just thought that it was a really cool city. Now my friend said New York and didn’t give many reasons. This sparked quite a debate and eventually led to next period (a computer class) me and him looking it up quite extensively. We found out things like NY is much more expensive but the jobs are generally more paying there. Also in our quest we found out that the best countries to live in were unanimously Australia, Canada, Sweden, Switzerland and Austria. The second thing today was we talked about the Ebola victim and Ebola in general in AP U.S. History. Surprisingly a lot of people including my teacher are quite scared, I think it’s not too big of a threat but there is something unnerving about how we have never really experienced something like this. The rest of the day went by fairly boring so that concludes my first entry.
