My mentors have mostly been a product of college. Five professors really stood out at my college - Cheatham, Hankins, Petty, Cripps, and Untch - I owe each of them some stock options, except my stock options never vested.

One year Dr. Cripps took off for a year long sebatical, he was temporily replaced by quite possibly one of the best professors I have been lucky enough to learn from, David A. Sykes (co-author of A Practical Guide To Testing Object-Oriented Software). He taught an Object Oriented Design class. The textbook was the ubiquitous Design Patterns. Four of the students were professors, one other was maverick.

maverick was my first mentor, although he didn't know it. I came from a graphics background (my first degree was in Recording Industry with a minor in Computer Animation). I showed him some graphics techniques, he showed me Linux.

In the 'real world' - the only mentors I have worked for were maverick and eduardo - at Surfari.com, mav taught me how to program Perl like a Perl programmer, and Ed (besides introducing me to Perl Monks), taught me how to act professional (and shoot a gun).

Both of these cats are younger than me - mentors do not have to be elders - just impactful teachers.

<suck-up>
Today my mentors are here at Perl Monks - everyday I learn something new.
</suck-up>

Jeff

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