Counsel in the heart of man is like deep water; but a man of understanding will draw it out. –Â Proverbs 20:5, KJV
Even if you have good mentors, learning wisdom from them is a skill. It’s an art that takes a lifetime, and I certainly haven’t mastered it. But the wisest people I know do several things. They ask good questions, they observe carefully, and they follow up with those from whom they’ve learned. Here are some thoughts on applying these patterns in your grad school mentoring relationships:
Finding and asking good questions. What kinds of questions have you found it helpful to ask?
1.    Finding good questions
It seems obvious that asking good questions is one of the keys to getting sound advice. But sometimes in graduate school I felt that I didn’t even know which questions to ask. Over time I found that it was helpful to ask questions raised by a specific project, questions raised by my own life, and questions raised by things a mentor does particularly well. I also found it helpful to have a general question or two that I asked a wide variety of people.
Athena, in the shape of Mentor, and Telemachus. John Flaxman (1755–1826).
Now that we’ve explored some ways to find mentors as an undergrad, I’d like to transition and focus on some elements that make up the art of being mentored. I hope that what I say here will be helpful across a range of mentoring situations, but I think it’s particularly applicable to graduate students. Since many graduate students spend more than four years in their programs, mentoring relationships in grad school are often long-term. Professors frequently begin to treat you more like a junior colleague and less like a student, so mentors are often a bit more open about their professional interests and challenges, and about the balance of their work and personal lives. Being mentored in this way is an art, one that needs to be honed over time just as much as skills like academic writing or teaching large lecture classes. The first art I’d like to address is the art of recognizing and engaging with different kinds of mentoring.
Last week, I gave some general thoughts on finding good mentors as an undergraduate. This week, I’ll talk a bit about finding mentors who share your beliefs. This is not in any way to minimize the value of mentors who have different views about life. I’ve learned valuable skills, knowledge, and virtues from mentors who had completely different assumptions about the way the world works. It’s often quite helpful to have a mentor who will challenge your deepest beliefs about the world. But, as in most things, it’s also helpful to find some mentors who see things from a similar angle and can deepen your understanding of how your faith and your field interact. And it can be a difficult task.
Many professors are hesitant to talk about their own epistemology in class, in the commendable desire to give students room to express their individual viewpoints. And as a student, it can be intimidating to ask a professor what he or she believes, even in an individual conversation during office hours. Leaving those issues aside, it’s simply hard to build community in the rush of managing course schedules and extracurriculars. Here are a few ways to look if you’re trying to find mentors who share belief in Christ. Some of these thoughts are easier to apply in graduate school (the suggestion about going to conferences, for instance), but I hope that they’re helpful to think about in undergrad as well. If you are interested in graduate school, applying some of these suggestions will help to prepare for that as well. [Read more…] about Finding Mentors Who Share Your Faith