Why Mentoring Matters

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As part of my course work, I have students engaging with a mentoring program through the OEM Connect project. As I’m doing this work, with a view to improve students’ connections to the world of education, creating a real life link to the classrooms within my local context, I realize that this should and could also work for my PhD context.

Is there such a thing as a PhD mentor, or is that supposed to be the role the supervisor/ advisor does. I don’t think these are mutually beneficial. Mentoring is someone you can turn to for the trivial, mundane, innocuous things that come up within your institutional and topic related work. The supervisor isn’t the person to turn to for that stuff. I’ve been turning to some of the colleagues who are going through the PhD courses with me, but they are not able to mentor me into this PhD work either. They are as new to this work as I am. I’ve been looking at those in academia that provide insights into the work, but they aren’t the people I would turn to for questions or advice on how to do adminis-trivial tasks relating to publication, for example.

So what do mentors do? They listen with an ear to the unsaid. They ask open, honest questions to prompt thinking. They offer support for the struggles in the messy work of writing. They provide critical thinking to ideas and actions. They push when needed, by checking in to see how things are going. They pull when you get bogged down and get stuck. They are both friend and enemy since they’ll know the inner you, as well as the you that is becoming. They’ll be there to get you through and keep you going. They become critical friends in the PhD journey.

So who will be my mentor? Where can I find someone who is outside my current academic contexts, outside my current PhD work, but who would be willing to be the one I turn to when it’s needed. Who will be the one to check in on me when they haven’t seen me for a while, to make sure I’m not stuck in academic mud. I’m looking for that certain special someone to be my mentor for the next few years. Could it be you?

Image attribution: Photo by Farid Askerov on Unsplash