\nWhy not? I\u2019ve always had an interest in rules. I study linguistics and have studied mathematics before, so I\u2019m good at rules and structure. When I decided to become a judge, we had no active judge in the south of Sweden, so I thought that becoming a judge would make it easier to run events around here. I had mostly GPTs in mind at that time. It turned out that I would do a little bit more than run GPTs.<\/p>\n
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Tell us your favourite judge story. How has being a judge influenced your non-Magic life?<\/strong> This has helped me a lot working with other events as well, for example while working with late registrations for Lundaloppet, making better signs that help people find where they should go.<\/p>\n You were nominated by Gilbert Hedegaard and David Frendin because of your impressive work at mentoring.\u00a0 Please tell us\u00a0how we can achieve success by mentoring at our local Judge scene. Mentoring is a very practical skill; it\u2019s about providing the right challenge at the right time in order to help the candidate achieve his goals. You have to be very flexible as a mentor, since every candidate is different and has different starting point and different goals. Mentors are also different, find a style that suits you and be yourself.<\/p>\n I think of mentoring roughly in the following metaphorical way:<\/em><\/p>\n The student\u2019s goal is the next floor and the mentoring process is the stairs that lead to the next floor. It will require some effort to walk up the stairs, but if the steps are of the right size, the stairs are a help.\u00a0 If the steps are too big, they are an obstacle. If they are too small, you\u2019re not getting anywhere, and you end up doing the same thing over and over, and that\u2019s not good, just ask Sisyphus.<\/p>\n Being creative in creating challenges that help the candidate\u2019s development in areas where he needs it is the challenge. It isn\u2019t necessary that it\u2019s done during a tournament; it can be in a more relaxed setting.<\/p>\n These are some important things that I think help a lot for mentoring:<\/em><\/p>\n Humor<\/em> Intuition and understanding<\/em> The local scene<\/em> Most of the time, for the second event, the candidate can run the event entirely by himself, but I like to be around as a backup, so that he can turn to me if he really needs it. And after that I like to play in the event with the candidate judging, when I feel that the candidate is pretty close to being ready to test.<\/p>\n![\"Gunnar-Holmstedt\"](\"http:\/\/blogs.magicjudges.org\/jotw\/files\/2013\/03\/Gunnar-Holmstedt.jpg\")
<\/a>Occupation:<\/strong> Student
\nFavourite card:<\/strong> Delver of Secrets<\/a>
\nLeast favourite card:<\/strong> AEther Vial<\/a>
\nFavourite format:<\/strong> Legacy
\nFavourite non-Magic Game:<\/strong> Ascension: Chronicle of the Godslayer
\nBest tournament result:<\/strong> Semifinalist at my so far only PTQ as a player.
\nRandom fact about yourself:<\/strong> My random generator chose the following fact: I play the violin and have done so since I was a kid.<\/p>\n
\n<\/strong>At a convention in Malm\u00f6, there was a legacy event, 8 players, 3 rounds of Swiss. 4 judges are playing and end up 5th-8th. Judges can\u2019t play, right?<\/p>\n
\nI\u2019ve improved a lot of skills, especially organizational skills and leadership skills. When I started judging I was the only active judge in my area, but as we got more judges and bigger events, PTQ\u2019s and such, I got to work more with staffing events and also head judging with other judges.<\/p>\n
\n<\/strong>So, let\u2019s get underway with the novel on mentoring\u2026<\/p>\n
\nUsing humor in mentoring helps a lot, it can be used both as a way to make your students more relaxed and can also be used to illustrate important things. It\u2019s always easier to remember fun things and attaching a concept to a fun story or something comical makes it easier for people to remember and understand things.<\/p>\n
\nGetting a feeling for concepts is really important, they should work with things and get a feeling for it and if needed you\u2019ll help them, then you discuss with the afterwards. Using examples is really important for understanding, since it helps the candidate attach an often abstract concept to a concrete situation, as well as it lets him think about how to handle things and reflect over his own solutions that he made.<\/p>\n
\nApplying this to the local scene, FNM is a good training ground for a judge candidate and what I like to do is to have the candidate shadow me for the first round of the first event and then gradually take over, and during the event make sure that you get a chance to discuss rules and policy, either from situations that come up or from your mental library if you don\u2019t have many calls.<\/p>\n