Plop! You’ve graduated and landed, hitting the ground running. Poof! You’re registered and now you’re a real estate professional. Not so fast, my dear rabbit. In this instance, you are better off teaming up with the turtles.
Schooling is to knowledge what mentoring is to mastery of skills. Succeeding in academia is simply a precursor. You are not the next Fred Astaire just because you have aced the gold medal dance level at one of his franchises. You are not Vidal Sassoon incarnate, having graduated from the resplendent beauty school located in the ever-so-chic downtown core. Every school and every curriculum is deficient and will always be so.
What is absent in the curriculum will always be lacking. Actually, there is one exception that I will mention later. Suffice it to say that no course of studies in real estate education, whether provided to you by the “Industry-Ready School of Real Estate” all the way up to a Harvard-type program, will produce the consummate professional registrant. No institute will do.
The most effective way of understanding what you have studied – and yes, some curricula and instructional techniques are better than others – is to imitate highly respected, practising professionals. In other words, to find a mentor. For a graduate to develop their potential and create their own style, observing and emulating role models is critical.
We learned to draw by copying. We learned to play an instrument by mimicking musicians. We improved our athletic prowess by replicating the diet habits and practice routines of champions. We learned to kiss… well, you get my point.
Even innovation and creativity spring from imitation. The best doctors, the best lawyers, the best teachers, the best parents all copied leaders in their field before breaking out as experts and professionals in their own right.
To learn the fundamentals of your craft, acquire a good education from a good school. To become a master in your craft, work with leaders in the field. Find a mentor. Develop student-sensei relationships.
Mentoring embedded in the education process is the ideal avenue for developing graduates who “hit the ground running” when entering a profession. It can be done. It has been done. To create mentoring, co-op real estate education requires a structural, legalistic overhaul not envisioned in the near future. Pity.
Ozzie Logozzo is executive director of OREA Real Estate College. He has a master’s degree in education from the University of Toronto and has managed a number of commercial and residential real estate brokerage offices over the years, including his own operation. He was the 1993 recipient of OREA’s Education Merit Award and 1987 recipient of Real Estate Educators Association’s prestigious Educator of the Year Award.
