Evolution of a “TRAINEE”

I am a “TRAINEE”. A difficult phase in the life of many. I would like to call it a phase which involves the evolution of a student into a professional. I had a silly idea of googling this term and the official definition i get is:

Trainee – Someone who is being trained

One of my frustrated friend prefers a different version of definition for the word ‘Trainee’.

Trainee: A person who waits for long hours to get a negative feedback for his hard work done for his superiors and is still expected to maintain a smile on his face.

The evolution process depends a lot on the  mentor of the trainee.  A frank and appreciative mentor is supposed to the best a novice can get (I am one of those lucky brats).  There exists a gap between a trainee and his mentor, you may call it a POWER GAP or KNOWLEDGE GAP. This can be considered  similar to the term ‘GENERATION GAP ‘ between a parent and a child.