I just read this
post on TenureSheWrote
(great blog by the way!) titled “It takes a village to mentor an academic”. I
think that is very true and I think the biggest lesson I have learned during my
post-doc is to go out and find your own
team of mentors. During my PhD I didn’t realize that yet, and I thought
that you had to work with what you were given, which in my case was someone I sometimes
hated and sometimes liked. During my post-doc, the first time I gave my PI
a grant to read and he said:”Looks great, I think you’ll get it” I thought that
was a really nice comment and very helpful of hir. However, when I didn’t get
said grant, I realized that next time I may want to ask more people to look at
it, which is what I did.
However, not just for reading-purposes was it useful to sometimes be bold and ask people for advice, also for things like career advice, advice on where to go next with experiments and advice on how to deal with other people in the lab. At first I felt awkward asking people to help me out with no obvious benefit to them, but in the past couple of years I have become more confident in asking others for their input and advice. And I try to pay back by helping out others who come to me asking for advice or whether I want to proofread something. Where papers are the currency of science, mentoring seems the karma of science.
Did you find your own team of mentors and how do you feel about asking other people for advice and guidance?
Many of us bluehairs/greybeards are interested in being a mentor, in helping, in reading stuff you want to submit. Sometimes we have time, and sometimes we don't. But ask. For me, one of the most impressive things are students taking initiative (not what they know, but what they know they don't know).
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