Mentor: a small community NE of Cleveland, Ohio (USA). No, no, that’s not the one I want, though the town’s wonderful mile-long extra wide beach on Lake Erie (Mentor Headlands State Beach) is where I spent much of my youth getting sunburned, awkwardly gawking at the pretty girls because I was too shy to approach them, body surfing in the ocean quality waves, swimming from buoy to buoy, jogging barefoot on the rock jetty out to the lighthouse & back.

Here it is Mentor: a wise & trusted guide & advisor. Wise guide? I don’t know. Maybe more of a wise guy. In verb form, it’s to serve as a teacher or trusted counselor. OK, I can do that.

Yes, having abandoned all hope of changing the schooling system, which dares to call itself education, into something other than autocratic bullying of kids at the lower levels, fearing them & keeping them under strict control in their teens, & lulling them to sleep in their college years with ceaselessly dull PowerPoint presentations, I have decided to launch a worldwide mentoring program.

Mentoring: I see it as the supportive & guiding process of turning someone’s undirected energy & desires into action, into something that will leave an indelible mark on the doer & on those with whom s/he interacts, especially on those whom the mentee helps with his/her newfound strengths & capabilities.

Mentoring is much more than just coaching (therapy light or career counseling). It is not only an attempt to find a blend between one’s abilities & one’s path in life but to also make the journey a more rewarding adventure. Self-knowledge, assertiveness, listening skills, conflict resolution & mediation skills, creative thinking, values clarification for oneself & knowing how to help others clarify theirs is paramount for a human transformation consultant. I share my 50+ years of experience as a social psychologist, social worker, teacher, conflict mediator, workshop leader, personal growth group facilitator, & psychotherapist to help you embark on your voyage with greater success than if left floundering on your own by an unconcerned community & bullheaded schooljail system which has abandoned its youth in a tangle of meaningless diploma-seeking, impossible debts, & absurd restricting requirements.

I assist youth in their struggles to find themselves & to make their attempts at helping others a joyful experience for all.

Instead of blowing your time learning to stay awake through the dullest PowerPoint presentation, to kiss the butts of clueless autocratic so-called teachers, to lose sleep & your health dealing with their petty requirements, & burying yourself in debts of 10s of 1000s of $s or €uros, you can have a fulfilling experience doing what you truly want to do with your youthful exuberance. Having been young – yet not forgotten the experience as most teachers seem to have done – I help you apply your talents in ways that will be most productive for you & for those with whom you live, work, & study, whether in educational, health, civic, recreational, family, hopefully not corporate, or any other settings.

I am equally open to mentoring older folks who have been excised from their careers by an ever-shifting job market, especially those who have always wanted to find what truly draws them, what they really want to do, where their hearts are.

So instead of blowing your money & your minds in mindless school surroundings, come join me & others as we explore alternative ways to attain our dreams, yours & mine.

To parents, I say,

“Give me your tired, your poor kids,
Your strictly
controlled & manipulated offspring yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your schooljail system.
Send these, the lost & tempest-tossed to me,
I extend my hand to help them break free!”

I love finding the flaws in unsinkable Titanics.

For example, there’s a supposed mentoring guru on the i-net who advises would-be mentors. His 1st point is “I do the task . . . You watch & learn.” Thud! That was me falling over from instant boredom. Watch? Huh, wha . . . ?

Telling someone to watch anything . . . Is that any different from encouraging them to attach themselves to the boob tube or the computer screen with superglue? We’ve all been there; we’ve all done that! And where are we now? On the brink of environmental meltdown with overtones of greedy corporate psychopaths breathing down our necks to “Buy, buy, & get out of our way & die.” I simply ask “Why?”

The 1st step must be one’s immersion in the task, the experience, trying it out, trying it on, seeing what it feels like being a naïve subject in the experiment, for everything, no matter how successful or how often it is repeated, is still an experiment because the most secure & safest experience is never foolproof & always carries an element of risk, of uncertainty. Will it hold? Will it work? Or will it simply fall over & break, or be blown off the pier by a hurricane like the Seaside Hts. (New Jersey) rollercoaster, or shudder & collapse as another unsuspected tremor from fracking rumbles through your once geologically stable region?

Only after experiencing it with one’s own hide, preferably countless times (which is why youth is so long), can we stand back & watch. Watching doesn’t mean anything until we’ve tasted it ourselves, been the subject, been torn apart & reassembled ourselves over & over. Only then can we begin to appreciate what it means to be an advisor, a counselor, a psychotherapist, a teacher, a social worker, a provider of resources to those of the following generation. How many of these do we have; how many of these have you ever experienced? Any at all? Or were you one of the lucky ones raised in an unforgiving environment which forced you to be creative & persistent & resourceful to survive? Experience was my cruel but loving mentor. Yes, we may try to save our offspring from the dangers & discomforts of growing up, but eventually the young must emerge out of their cocoons & either learn to smell the roses or get torn apart by their thorns.

Going to most schools will not get them there. Homeschooling is limiting & often the last resort of either the religiously impaired or parents seriously concerned with their progeny’s future.

I offer individual & group mentoring to the lost & the aimless as well as to those who know what they want but are uncertain of how to obtain it. The focus is on discovering oneself, one’s true strengths & motives, as we work together to get you on your way.

My special talents? Running active, no-holds-barred workshops on various human relations & self-awareness themes: teambuilding, self-assessment, self-esteem building, assertiveness, & interpersonal interaction & ice-breaker events. I do it through challenges for you to try out for yourselves followed with the processing of your reactions, values, thoughts, & feelings associated with it all. This carousel of life never stops spinning, & I do my utmost to help you experience & enjoy the ride to its fullest.

Contact me at 370 – 678 – 70305 (Lithuania) or

e-mail me at vytas@stoskus.net

so we could exchange the information necessary to begin interacting over Skype.

I consult in both English & Lithuanian.