The Virginia Alumni Mentoring Program, launched by the University Career Center and the U.Va. Alumni Association in 2013, works to match alumni mentors from various fields with current students who have similar interests and career aspirations. The mentoring program connected fourth-year College student Hayden-Anne Breedlove and College and Law School alumnus David Gogal last fall.
Breedlove plans to go to law school after she graduates this spring, and Gogal has been a practicing lawyer for the past 27 years.
“I found out about [the mentoring program] through an announcement that was made during a Class Council meeting last year, and I just went on the website and found out what it was,” Breedlove said. “I hope to be a lawyer, and so I thought it would be great to have a mentor who had gone to U.Va. Law School and could advise me on taking the LSAT, getting an internship, preparing for law school and that kind of thing.”
Gogal said he has been involved in many mentoring programs in the past, which began when he was a first-year working for the University’s former Big Sibling program, and he continues to enjoy mentoring today.
“I was also interested in being matched with someone like Hayden who is interested in law school, because I think, more now than when I was in college, that deciding to go to law school has become a much more important decision,” Gogal said. “It wasn’t that uncommon back in the 1980s for people who didn’t know what they wanted to do [to go to] law school. The thought was you could always do something with a law degree, but now it’s so expensive and the field is so complicated that making an informed decision is pretty critical.”
Although the two have not yet met in person, Gogal and Breedlove said the distance has not been an impediment in their mentor-mentee relationship.
“What I like about the program is that it’s pretty well structured — other mentoring programs leave it more to the people involved to create the relationship,” Gogal said. “The structure the University Career Services established, with an expectation to get in touch once a month either by Skyping or on the phone, [allows] you to get to know the person better, and with the regular contact, you can be more involved step-by-step with the things coming up, like signing up for classes and application deadlines.”
Gogal said he admires the initiation Breedlove has taken by participating in the mentoring program, and he hopes students like her will inspire other students to take advantage of alumni resources.
“Those who realize they might get something out of talking with an alum about the career they had or how they got to where they are, whether they enjoyed it, whether they regretted it — I think it’s a great resource,” Gogal said. “I give [Hayden-Anne] credit for taking initiative to join the program…I would hope that others would be inspired to do the same, because I know there are a lot of alums out there that are interested in providing that resource.”
Breedlove’s experience with the Virginia Alumni Mentoring program has already given her concrete advice on how to effectively pursue a career in her intended field and has inspired her to get an internship with a law firm.
“[My mentor has] really given me a lot of good advice,” Breedlove said. “He really emphasized that I try to get an internship, which isn’t something I had really thought about before. I’ve had plenty of internships before, but I just never thought about trying to get an internship at a law firm because I’m not a lawyer and I wasn’t really sure what I could do at a law firm. But upon his suggestion, I am now interning at a law firm here in Charlottesville and that has been great because I’ve gotten a lot of experience going to court and watching how the legal process works.”
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