How A Dark Mentor Impacts Life "Mentoring is a process for the informal transmission of knowledge, social capital, and the psychosocial support perceived by the recipient as relevant to work, career, or professional development; mentoring entails informal communication, usually face-to-face and during a sustained period of time, between a person who is perceived to have greater relevant knowledge, wisdom, or experience and a person who is perceived to have less” (Bozeman et al). Professor Micky Rosa acts as a dark mentor who teaches a group of people how to do something that is either criminal or socially unacceptable, successfully illustrating the process how he sparks the student Ben Campbell’s interest so as to recruit him as the big player for his blackjack team and thus changing his life by feeding his desire in the movie 21. However, this special experience benefits the team much more by rejecting his mentoring and switching onto the right track. As a math professor at MIT, Micky was shocked by the intelligence of Ben and he sees the great potential profit Ben could bring for his Blackjack team. Then, he tests Ben with the Monty Hall problem to make sure that he is qualified to play the role of the big player instead of the piece of luck. Based his answer on statistics or variable change, Ben keeps the emotions of paranoia, fear that affects most of people aside, and hence impresses Micky with high intelligence and calm personality. Micky determined to invite him to join a group of the school's most gifted students he picked that heads to Vegas every weekend armed with fake identities in order to make a lot of money. However, to his surprise, Ben was reluctantly to join them for having little interest in making a fortune of "dirty money", which is socially unacceptable according to the moral standard. Then Micky changed his strategy by taking advantage of Ben’s situation that he needs $300,000 to go to the Harvard Medical School which he has already been accepted but cannot afford. And also, he persuades so hard to change Ben's mind set that he is born for the game and he deserves to have more fun and win more money than he could possibly imaging. By describing the perfect world that he could be anyone he want and gain the access to continue pursuing his dream to go to Harvard Medical School, it incites curiosity for Ben to try it out while at the same time, it seems so hopeless to get the Robison Scholarship to sponsor his study. All these vacillate Ben's decision and trigger his desire deep in his mind. Finally, Micky successfully convinced Ben to join them by pretending to agree on the condition that as soon as he earns enough to play for the tuition, he could choose to leave. However, in Micky’s mind, he knows clearly how rarely that would happen as nobody could resist the great thrill and satisfaction derive from the gambling. Driven by the desire of the money, the Vegas lifestyle, and by his charming teammate, Ben begins to push the limits to go beyond his original intention, as Micky has expected. Eventually, Ben loses his balance. By building up in Ben's head to make himself feel important and different, Micky has gradually drawn Ben away further and further from before, such as showing the cruel side of the fact how things can happen from inside by getting him a special A. However, Ben and other students gain more from the Dark Mentor when they reject his teachings in purpose than the money they earn with Micky's method. As a turning point, driven alone by his emotion instead of logic thinking and counting, Ben loses $200,000, which completely irritated Micky. As a result, he takes everything including schooling away and thus putting Ben in desperation. However, only by vividly showing how greed and cruel Micky is makes Ben see clearly that Micky's philosophy towards life is all based on money and business. Therefore, Ben learns the great lessons from this tough experience, especially the values about the relationship, friendship and love. After realizing his mistakes, Ben confesses honestly to his mom for lying to her and also apologizes to his friends for ruining their trusts. Through all these actions, he gaining their supports and trusts from family and friends who really care about him once more. And the peaceful satisfaction derives from these healthy relationships are the things he really should cherish. What's more, he has also developed the right attitude towards the value of money. One should never merely chase after money only, or it makes no difference from a greed capitalist like Micky---the dark mentor. Now the team are still playing Blackjack and they even bring more friends to the casinos. However, it doesn't mean they are still addicted to the thrill achieved by gambling but instead they are no longer playing for themselves as a means of earning a lot of "dirty money", now they are only playing for fun as a form of entertainment to relax themselves from the competitive real life like we all need as normal people. And also it is for the sake of others, like working out the way to pay the pension for Cole Williams, the security chief of the casino who once badly trapped by Micky. That's something they need to do to pay for what they have done to the victims. For all these reasons, we could tell that they no longer worship money as much as they did under Micky's mentoring, there are things much more valuable than that, such as true relationships, friendships and love. By struggling all the way through the fighting against the dark mentor who trys so hard to attempt them by all means and also the deep-rooted desires in their inner hearts, the team make a clean sweep. All the teammates, especially Ben benefit a lot by eventually rejecting the dark mentor's teaching of working merely for self-interest and also overcoming the weakness of human nature by winning the battle against themselves, too. [1076 words]

Works Cited
21. Dir. Robert Luketic. Perf. Jim Sturgess and Kevin Spacey. Colunbia, 2008.
Bozeman, B.; Feeney, M. K. (October 2007). "Toward a useful theory of mentoring: A conceptual analysis and critique". Administrative and Society 39 (6): 719–739. http://aas.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/39/6/719.