I agree with a lot of this, especially what Kindred said. My mentor asked me straight up, from the beginning NOT to apply to be advanced. At that time I had no clue what that meant so I was terrified to do ANYTHING because I did not know what "applying for advanced" meant so I was afraid to really do much incase that was breaking the rules somehow. Lol. I never did apply, but got there on my own. However, I do understand why she asked that of me. Mentoring takes a lot of work and it's wonderful and I enjoy it so much, especially since I've been taking college courses on writing and editing. It's given me EVEN MORE practice. While most of my students have been advanced or are advanced, (I actually only have had ONE non-advanced!) I did tell my newest student who isn't advanced that I would love to mentor them and the only thing I ask is that they DO NOT apply for advanced until I graduate them. It does feel like being duped and it's not fair because a person who's that new is not ready for advanced anyways. When you're mentoring 4 other people who ARE advanced but do not know how to write a review or how to even request a product, one who's NEVER written more than one review a day in their life, you expect a student to be loyal to you if they aren't already advanced. I don't understand why they apply for advanced before a mentor when they've never written more than 2 reviews anyways. You have to spend a lot of time helping so I don't think it's wrong to ask them to wait until you graduate them. If they truly care about doing their best they'll want to wait and graduate with you anyways. That's how I see it.

OK, I have failed one before and it was hard. I felt kind of yucky that day, but after talking it over with my partner and realizing that it would not be fair to me or them if I passed them when the reviews were not written well or even slightly useful, I felt better. Honestly, failing a student who's truly needing a lot of help in the grammar, spelling and reviewing department is doing them a favor. Also, as a mentor, your name goes under that student's reviews. You get what I'm saying? I don't want to be a lazy mentor. If I didn't intend to give it my very best, I wouldn't have applied. I did though because I want to teach people something that will really stick with them and be helpful maybe for a lifetime (if they continue reviewing forever). Even just someone who needs help in the spelling/grammar dept. can gain a lot from a mentor.

Maybe I'm talking/writing too much! Yikes! Sorry... OK, I wouldn't fail someone just because I didn't like them, but I do if I'm positive that they cannot write a half way decent review without help. If I know they'll be coming back to me with a ton of questions, I'm going to fail them until they're ready. If they care about their reviews, they will thank me for keeping em' around. I mean there's no sense in being a mentor if you aren't going to do it correctly. I wouldn't want to be released into the reviewing world without knowing EVERYTHING I could know. I ask myself, if this student goes on without me and sits down for a review, are they going to come to a total blank and write a short few paragraphs like "I love this toy. It feels good" and nothing useful, it's not "ethical" to pass them.

If they simply don't care that I've taken the time to type up a huge list of what's wrong in the review, how to find the info they need and how to fix it, then I'm not even going to pass em'. I've written down all the specs before for students and told them where to find them like the material of a toy, size, etc. and the second time, I expect them to have listened and go and include that info on THEIR own. If they expect me to write it down again for them and just copy and paste it, no pass! Lol. I'm very fair though. I will offer my very best and stop what I'm doing sometimes to help a student. I will go to great lengths to help, but if there's no effort on their part, apparently I'm really not useful for them. As a mentor, all you can do is offer your best and if they don't want to take it and appreciate it, put it to use, you can know that you've done your very best job and let them move on if they so please.