Learn from your mentors

Having a teacher who cares for you can be tremendously powerful. It is nice to go through school and be liked by the teachers, which probably comes from just being polite and getting good grades. However finding someone who is willing to invest time with you early on can have a tremendous impact on your life.

First you get the advantage of someone other than your parents looking out for you and willing to provide some of their hard gained wisdom.

Second, at an early stage of learning anyone who has spent sometime gaining real skill, has a lot to show you. With the right guidance, the right fundamentals can be picked up at the beginning providing a huge head-start and hopefully avoiding a huge amount of rework.

This is not a one way street, one of the best ways to get better at things is to teach someone, so mentors get to hone and develop their own craft while working with you.

Mentors can also provide a perspective different from your friends and your family, exposing you to different ways of thinking, which is almost always a wonderful thing.

At later stages in your careers mentors can help prepare and position you for new roles and responsibilities.

This is the case where one good friend is worth a thousand acquaintances. Mentorship can be rewarding directly and emotionally.

That having been said, you can't force someone to be your mentor. Be open to building relationships with teachers or people you admire. If you feel a chemistry or bond pursue it. If not, expose yourself to different people in different situations. Like a good relationship all you need is one (though unlike dating its ok to have more than one mentor) so try to meet a lot of people and see what develops. Often you will find that as the relationship develops it will prepare you for future mentor relationships as you get older.

Be open, have fun and learn from those who are willing to teach.