Emerging Scholars Blog

InterVarsity's Emerging Scholars Network

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The Art of Mentoring as a Graduate Student

Tom recently posted about graduate students mentoring undergrads at Johns Hopkins. Graduate school offers many opportunities to mentor, whether that means chatting with your undergraduate students during office hours or introducing new graduate students to your department. Here are a few things I’ve learned about mentoring during graduate school.

1.  Treat the person you’re mentoring as a less-experienced peer.

ESN Mentoring Conversation
ESN Mentoring Conversation. One of the best things you can do for someone you’re mentoring is to communicate your respect for their work

One of the things that most impresses me about my own mentors is how well they do this. They show respect for my ideas and projects, but they also offer wisdom about areas where they have more experience.

One of the best things you can do for someone you’re mentoring is to communicate your respect for their work, and within that context explain things that person may not know yet. When I’m open to learning from the knowledge and experience of those I’m mentoring, I’m more able to pass on my knowledge in turn. [Read more…] about The Art of Mentoring as a Graduate Student

The Art of Maintaining Relationships With Mentors

My last post ended with a section on following up with mentors, and I’d like to expand on that a bit here. In this post, I’ll look at a few ways of maintaining mentor relationships over time. Sustaining anything over years is a challenge, and maintaining mentoring relationships can be hard, however appreciative you are of a mentor’s gifts to you. It’s difficult to catch up with people, especially in academic life where there are so many time pressures. But here are a few thoughts on staying in touch with mentors.

  • Mail Key on Keyboard
    Mail Key on Keyboard 🙂 “As you spend time with your mentors, pay attention to what communication styles they prefer.”

    Figure out a style that works for both of you.

Communication styles vary. Some professors find that writing long emails takes away from their energy for writing scholarship, so they prefer to catch up via occasional phone calls. Others like email because they can respond at their leisure and don’t have to worry about squeezing a phone call into a very complicated course schedule. Some people would much prefer a more substantial email every six months to a quick note more often, while others would rather hear from people more frequently even if that means less detail. As you spend time with your mentors, pay attention to what communication styles they prefer. Many professors will tell you up front which styles are most manageable for them; if not, you can often figure out from the way they tend to communicate with you. And of course it’s perfectly appropriate to ask a professor what’s the best way of keeping in touch, especially when you’re at a transition point such as graduating or moving to a different locality. [Read more…] about The Art of Maintaining Relationships With Mentors

The Art of Learning Wisdom from Mentors

Counsel in the heart of man is like deep water; but a man of understanding will draw it out. – 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:

Question Mark
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.

[Read more…] about The Art of Learning Wisdom from Mentors