One Approach to Being a Mentor

Original article written by Regina Moore posted 11 years 3 weeks ago

The mentor program in SIM is purely player-driven (ie, it’s not officially sponsored by the SIM administration) and is run by Carolyn Eaton, via a thread at the top of the Forum board for new players.

I’ve mentored over a half dozen players, one of which has been a SIMMY winner for New Trainer of the Year, and another that is sure to be nominated for Year 34.

If you’ve wavered on whether or not to throw your hat into the ring as a mentor for newish players, here are some things you might want to think about when making your decision.


A LITTLE HISTORY
After my first few experiences with mentoring newish players, I would have said that being a mentor doesn’t take much time at all. I was puzzled as to how few questions I got asked. My very first student had actually been in SIM for a while, and when she rather forcefully demanded a mentor on the mentor thread, and I was assigned to her, it turned out she only had one specific question she wanted answered.

My second student was a teenager (I’m 50), and when, after a few days of silence, I prompted her to not be shy about asking questions, she more or less indicated that she was busy with school and didn’t have that much time to spend on SIM. She seemed rather annoyed that I was checking in with her, which in turn made me wonder why she asked for a mentor in the first place. Anyway, after a few months she was gone.

My next student was a young man who was very involved in another racing game. He asked a lot of questions initially, but then disappeared for a while. After a few weeks, he reappeared briefly, and then was gone altogether.

At that point, I asked Carolyn Eaton to only pair me with players who admitted to being 35yo+, as I hoped they would be more grounded about what they wanted to do with their spare time, and wouldn’t perhaps be put off by being paired with a middle-aged woman, as opposed to somebody more “cool” and similar to their own age. (I don’t know if the age thing bothered any of my students up to that point, but it was starting to bother me.)

My next student was a woman who asked just a few questions, and apologized for taking up my time when she did. She stayed in the game quite a few game years, but now I see that she’s gone.

From there on out, my next four students have resulted in much more gratifying mentor/student relationships, where my role was much more in line with what I imagined a mentor to be. They all asked a lot of questions initially, and very gradually that tailed off, as they got more and more confident about how to play SIM. Even after I’ve moved on to other students, they’ll sometimes drop in to ask my opinion on something. So, that’s all been a lot more satisfying.


AVAILABILITY
It’s important that players who mentor have time to devote to answering questions. If you’re the kind of player who has a limited window of time to sign in to SIM, that could get frustrating for an eager, new student, who isn’t too thrilled by the idea of having to wait a few days to have their questions answered. At the very least, I think that players with limited time for SIM, but who are willing to be mentors, need to explain to their students right up front that they’ll be answering questions at specific frames of time, so the new player doesn’t feel that they’re being ignored, or that they’re an unwanted burden.

Enthusiastic new players are healthy for SIM, and that enthusiasm should be catered to as much as possible.


ESTABLISHING THE MENTOR-STUDENT RELATIONSHIP
When I’m paired with a new student, in my first message I give a little background about myself, and then tell them that my way of mentoring is to wait for them to ask me specific questions. If I try to tell them everything I think they should know, then I may as well tell them to go read the FAQs. Presumably, players ask for a mentor because they feel overwhelmed by all the faucets in SIM, and trying to pull together all the aspects that go into racing and breeding horses successfully. If I write a dissertation to them about all the important things they should do and not do, then all I’m doing is overwhelming them all the more. So, I stress that they need to ask whatever questions are most on their mind at any specific time.

I will proactively tell them certain things at certain points, such as pointing out the Dare to Dream program at Trial Park. But I wait for a slow moment in our conversations to mention things like that.

I also, in that first message, assure them that they’re not “bothering” me by asking lots of questions. I wouldn’t have volunteered to be a mentor if I wasn’t willing to be bothered. I also point out that, since I work from home, I’m signed into SIM a lot more often than not, so I have a lot of availability to answer questions. When I get such questions, I give priority to answering them, because I don’t want to hold up an eager, enthusiastic new player from absorbing as much information as possible, as quickly as possible.


DIFFICULTIES WITH BEING A MENTOR
It’s hard to take on a new player within a few weeks before SIM goes on break or, worse, at the very beginning of one of the long three-week breaks. Trying to keep a new player interested, when they can’t really do anything except spend money, is a tough thing. I really admire players who stick out a long break at the very beginning of their SIM experience, because it’s understandable how tempted they can be to blow off the game altogether. In fact, I wish SIM would warn new players that are signing up during break, or within a week or two of break starting, that they aren’t going to be able to do all the regular things of racing and training horses until activities resume as normal. Then they can decide if they still want to sign up at the present time, or perhaps come back in a few weeks when they can actually play.

One of the more frustrating things for me as a mentor, is when a student asks a specific, straightforward question, and I feel I can’t give a simple, straight answer. Such as, “My horse just won a 50k claimer with a 76 speed fig. Should I enter it in a stakes race next?” Or, “This mare nicked B with this stallion. Is that good?” “This new Paint yearling I bought went 300yds in 18.20, which is way slower than a lot of the other work times. Does that mean he’s worthless?” “This horse I bought galloped stakes. He’s going to be really special, isn’t he?”

The problem with these simple questions is that they’re a lot of ifs, ands, and buts surrounding the answers, including which breed/surface/distance category each horse in question is. So, I usually end up giving a detailed answer that I suspect probably muddies the waters, and isn’t the bottom-line yes or no that the student was looking for. But I also keep stressing that there isn’t much that’s black-or-white in SIM, and that’s as it should be. That variability a big factor in making the game so intriguing.

If a student seems to question my advice about a particular issue, I will prompt them to ask for input on the Forum, or ask other players they might have developed friendships with. There few situations in SIM that have one right answer, and there’s nothing wrong with a player seeking out as many opinions as possible.


CATERING TO THE STUDENT’S NEEDS
We experienced players all have our established ways of doing things, and often a fixed perspective or opinion on various aspects of SIM. When one is a mentor, it’s important to be open to how the student wants to play SIM, rather than trying to force our own favored strategies upon them.

For example, I’m a big believer in having a large stable of racehorses, if one wants to earn as much money as possible, as quickly as possible. I’ve seen this work very successfully for a couple of players I’ve mentored. But if a student has a limited amount time to spend on SIM, then preaching a strategy of a large stable is doing them a disservice. Likewise, as beneficial and fun as I’ve found playing mixed breeds, if a student doesn’t show an interest in anything other than Thoroughbreds, then it’s unproductive for me to try to encourage them to get into mixers.


ESTABLISHING INDEPENDENCE
Sometimes a student will ask me what to do in a certain situation. I’ll tell them to do X, and they’ll go off and do Y. While I might roll my eyes or tease them about not listening to me, a part of me admires such streaks of independence. After all, I figure that a successful mentorship is one where the student develops the confidence to make their own decisions, even when they’ve been advised otherwise. Besides, sometimes people just plain have to make their own mistakes to learn something, rather than having a desired course of action dictated to them.

I’ve had a couple of students want to give me their SIM log-on and password, so I can enter their horses in the correct races. I refuse to do this. Not only do I have my hands full with running my own stable, but a student isn’t going learn anything from me or anybody else who plays SIM on their behalf.


GIFTING HORSES OR MONEY
It’s common in SIM for experienced players to give new players gift horses, when such new players make their presence known on the Forum, or in chat. Usually, these are horses of dubious worth, though they might occasionally be a has-been stakes horse, which can still be successful with their back class.

I have sometimes seen the idea of gifting viewed with dismay, when some feel that a particular good horse(s) given to a newish player gives that player an unfair advantage over his fellow newbies.

As a mentor, I try to find a happy medium between these two extremes. I believe that new players need all the help they can get, in terms of obtaining good horses, or trying to build up enough money to purchase a decent horse. Yet, I also believe that new players should have to work for such, to some degree, and not just have nice benefits handed to them.

I have sometimes given old, quality geldings to new players. I remember one case where I had a 6yo turf router that was consistent in stakes, but had never won a stakes for me in the two years that I’d owned him. I gave him to the player I was mentoring, hoping he could pick up some secondary stakes money with the gelding. Turns out, the horse won two stakes races during the year for that player.

I don’t have many quality old geldings hanging out in my barn anymore, so I will often claim a horse or two for a high price, in an attempt to give a student a better quality of horse than the cheap Alaska claimers he or she most likely has. I also make a point of giving my current student a foal I’ve bred by one of my own stallions.

So, I do little perks for my students to move them along the path to better horses, but I’m not going to, say, outright give them a horse that is currently winning stakes races.

I have plenty of money, but I’m also not going to just up and give a student some money. I suppose I would if one of my players got in a serious financial bind, but if they’re listening to my advice, they should never reach a point of outright poverty, and none have.

While I appreciate that having just a couple of hundred thousand or so can feel discouraging when playing SIM with others who have many millions, I try to combat that discouragement by suggesting ways the player can build up their bank balance on their own, whether that be racing a large stable, participating in contests, or managing to buy a quality horse cheap (such as a Steward-bred) and reselling it for a much higher price.


In summary, mentoring newish players can be a very gratifying experience. But one shouldn’t go into it with specific expectations of what the mentor-student relationship is going to be like, because each relationship is going to have its own personality, so to speak. I think it’s important that the mentor be as open to being flexible within the relationship, as they would like the student to be in receiving advice.

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