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Maryanne’s Mentorship Adventure Q & A
Maryanne Cleasby, Head of Business Improvement and IT in our Adroit Head Office is a volunteer mentor with Geelong Youth Engagement, youth resilience program.
With only 2 days until she embarks on this life-changing trip, we caught up with Maryanne to ask her some questions about how she’s feeling and what she’s learnt.
How are you feeling about to embark on your trip?
A bit excited and a bit nervous. I’m ready to finally get over there and get going.
What have you learnt as you’ve prepared yourself?
30 seconds is a super long time when exercising but no time at all.
What are you looking forward to the most?
Just getting out there and getting it done, getting through the first few days and finding my mountain legs and breathing then enjoying the views and peacefulness. I’m sure when I’m there I will be looking forward to getting back to the hotel after 10 days for a hot shower!
What have been your biggest challenges?
Besides all the training, hills, and dying on the inside when training but having to keep a happy face to fire up the kids so they keep going.… Getting out of my comfort zone and making and keeping conversations with teenagers who at first aren’t really interested in talking to you.
Do you believe you’ve become more resilient? Why?
Probably – if I hadn’t, I wouldn’t just suck it up and go to training each week treating it as a must do rather than a choice. I would just sit back and hope I somehow get magically fitter and can walk the trek without any practice!
Would you recommend the program to other people going forward?
To date, for sure, its been both a physical and mental challenge, at times you just want to give up and sit on the edge and hide but you can’t. If you don’t go to the training, you are letting yourself and your team mates down. Once we get on the trek, there’s no quitting so the better prepared we are before going, the better the trip will be.
Do you believe that the participants in the program have become more resilient?
In my opinion, they look more confident and happier so certainly seems they have. They have taken on this huge responsibility to complete this program, it’s something they have had to do for themselves, no one could do it for them, so I would say yes, they have come a long way. They have done a great job and all the mentors look forward to watching them cross the finish line and seeing the excitement and proud moment to recognise they have completed this huge task. If they can get through this, they can get through anything.
We wish Maryanne all the best in her final few days of training and hope she has a safe and rewarding trek!
3 Comments
All the best for the trek Mez. Your an inspiration to us all. Look forwarding to hearing all about it on your return. Keep safe.XX
Good luck, I am sure with all the training and hard work you will breeze through toe trek
Amazing Maryanne – Enjoy and Good Luck!