The benefits of mentoring are far reaching, and very important. Mentoring is now an integral part of business and university life. Everyone should have a mentor. Mentoring supports personal skill base development, leading to corporate returns and subsequently regional and national rewards. It helps the economy move towards a more desired culture of support, and assists with recruitment, induction and retention.

I completed a General Practice/Property Management Bachelor of Science Degree at Anglia between 1990 and 1995.

As a mature student, I was already married with one child and one on the way, assisting with the running of our family business and somehow managing to work alternate Saturdays doing my day job! By having a supportive partner/wife and a team of managers and staff, I was able to gain a distinction in the degree. I went onto sit the Assessment of Professional Competence in front of an RICS panel during the autumn of 1995, and fully qualified by the end of that year.

I have many fond memories and friendships from that period which remain with you throughout your working life. I only keep in touch with fellow students on an irregular basis, but it is nice that they are there dotted around the country.

There always seemed to be a good relationship between the staff and students, and my group enjoyed respectful, but interesting debates with the likes of Freddie Davies, Hugh Perks, Mary Edwards, Tony Ashton (late) and Nigel Powel.

I always recall what excellent food the ladies produced in the refectory saving my wife cooking at home on college days!

It was only right that I accepted Jan Haldane's invitation to act as a mentor in 2008/2009, but due to pressures of work and trying to improve the property market, I was unable to participate last year.

My first mentee was an international student from Mauritius. He was studying Quantity Surveying and hoping to work for a City firm or return to Mauritius to work in the construction industry. The Island is being developed very quickly. There is a demand for RICS qualified Surveyors out there.

My current mentee, Natasha Tyler, is extremely self motivated and already has two part-time jobs to help cover her fees, and fits an awful lot into her busy week. At the same time, she has arranged a work experience/part-time job in a building surveying practice once a week, which is giving her on-site training and a detailed insight to working life as a chartered surveyor. Her determination to pass all her modules at the first time of asking and getting through the paperwork of the mentoring scheme has been easy to achieve thus, freeing up time for her to go out and gain beneficial work experience with our two charted surveyors and block property manager. Her stay with us has involved far more on site work experience, rather than lots of work book testing and discussion.

Natasha deserves to do well, as she shows great motivation in balancing both her working and study life. She has aspirations after her degree and has plans for the next five years. We hope that our firm's small involvement will help her along the way.

Kind regards.

Yours sincerely,
David A.C. Boyden B.Sc. M.R.I.C.S. F.N.A.E.A.,
For DESMOND G. BOYDEN.

From the mentoring scheme my confidence has grown as I interacted and met up with many people from the business and accompanied them on site visits. My meetings were very varied; some days I would spend the whole day out of the office whereas other days we spent time looking over my CV to improve it. It was great to hear an employer's view of my CV to understand how to make it stand out!

The mentoring scheme has also given me a greater understanding of the property market and all the roles available. Through the mentoring tasks and talking to David I now have a clearer idea of my future goals and where I want to be in the future.

Natasha Tyler