My new student paid for 8 weeks and was studying 8 weeks straight – said no mentor ever

In a perfect world, mentorship is an intensive, non-stop form of study. The student pays for a month and is studying for this month at a fast pace.

But it’s rarely like that in a real world. Some can feel sick, some can have a holiday or other circumstances preventing them from studying every day. When we say ‘some’, we mean both students and mentors. This is why we offer different ways of managing the student’s subscription.

Subscription start

The subscription period doesn’t start after it’s been paid. The student might pay on Friday night, but will be ready to start only on Monday. Or it might be that the mentor is not available this weekend. So the mentor activates the subscription and then you start studying.

Subscription pause

Sometimes the students might be not able to study. They might become seriously ill or have some other circumstances. Sometimes the mentors might be not able to teach. They might have a holiday or, again, become seriously ill. In such (rare, we hope) cases, the mentor can pause the subscription for any amount of time. You can do this in your Office.

We don’t take often pauses too kindly. Pausing the subscription is something that you can do for exceptional circumstances, you shouldn’t abuse it with every student. Sometimes half of the subscriptions are paused, which is not really beneficial for both us and mentors. So be careful with the pauses, don’t only empathize with the students’ problems, but also remember that they might be just smart- or lazy asses, and you still want your money.

On top of this, some students pay for the mentorship and start studying later on. It’s a really bad practice, so we try to cease it. But we need your help with that.

Exceptional cases of weekly pauses

Sometimes we have students who are available only on weekends. Maybe they have 2 full-time jobs and 5 children. If it’s true, the mentor can pause the subscription from Monday to Friday and work with such student only on weekends. But this case is highly exceptional.

What to do if your student lost some of the subscription days

Things happen:

• The mentor might not have been available for a couple of days but has a reasonable excuse for that
• The student might not have been available for a week or so (e.g. be in a hospital)
• Some other situation might have happened

In such cases you can recover the days which haven’t been used and have been lost because of some exceptional circumstances. To do that contact Alexey in Basecamp, tell the student’s e-mail, the amount of days you want to recover and the reason you weren’t able to work during those days. If it’s urgent, you might as well contact Leonid or Kirill with the same request.

What to do if your student needs another mentor

For example, a complete newbie signs up for a mentorship with somebody who cannot and doesn’t want to teach the students with no basic knowledge. Or the student has just understood that needs PHP, not Ruby. In such cases, we need to change the mentor and recalculate the amount of subscription days left according to the price of a new mentor. So you need to contact Alexey in Basecamp and outline the situation. If it’s urgent, you might as well contact Leonid or Kirill with the same request.