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. One of the things that most impresses me about my own mentors is how well they do this. They show … [Read more...] about The Art of Mentoring as a Graduate Student
Mentoring
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 … [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: 1. … [Read more...] about The Art of Learning Wisdom from Mentors
The Art of Being Mentored
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 … [Read more...] about The Art of Being Mentored
Will You Partner with ESN?
This year has been a time of transition for the Emerging Scholars Network, and one more transition —the end of our fiscal year —is approaching soon. InterVarsity's fiscal year wraps up at the end of this month, and we'd like you to consider partnering with ESN with a financial contribution between now and June 30. As you probably know, ESN encourages and equips the next generation of Christian scholars. How do we do this? Mentoring: We help connect younger scholars with those who have gone before them. We also … [Read more...] about Will You Partner with ESN?