Some Thoughts on Mentorship

Last Friday, a friend and I tagged along to a Getty visit my undergraduate research adviser arranged for his seminar, and I got to cross off a few things on my to-do list, namely:

• See a Pacific Standard Time exhibit at the Getty;
• See, specifically, the PST exhibit co-curated by another professor from my undergrad program; and
• Treat my mentor out to a meal.

Over the past few weeks, and just the other day again after having dinner with a friend after my MOCA visit on Wednesday, I’ve been having a lot of conversations about mentorship in academia, so I figured, what better impetus to reflect on how mentorship impacted me than this visit? (A quick note: I use the terms “research adviser” and “mentor” interchangeably when it comes to my own adviser, because he seamlessly transitioned between those roles whenever I needed him to, and was gracious enough to act as both, even informally. [1])

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Recently, I came across an article called “Mentoring Undergraduates: Professors Strategically Guiding the Next Generation of Professionals“; even just the introduction alone resonated with me. In the fall of 2015, after having exchanged a few emails but never once stepping foot into my professor’s office, I finally went in for office hours and asked if he was teaching for the following quarter, because I wanted to take another class with him on my way to completing what was still then an art history minor. He looked at me, incredulous, and asked, “You’re not in the major already?” I enjoyed the subject very much, but hadn’t even thought of taking it beyond a minor — or that I was particularly any good at it — until we spoke about it that day. The following quarter, over the course of a few more conversations, I agonised over changing my major (I couldn’t have gone very far; I was already studying history at the time) and, deciding I could have my cake and eat it, too, I double-majored. By the spring, though, my fate was sealed: art history it was. (Mind, there were other reasons for this decision — it wasn’t just because someone had picked me from a sea of 75 faces and decided I would be a good addition to the major. Seeing him champion me academically, though, even that early on, was a bonus.)

Having the right mentor and/or adviser has always been central to every conversation I’ve had about grad school. Other considerations, of course, include the environment (do you like the campus? the city? if you’re not in the city proper, would you like to be? if so, how far away is it?); the rigour of the program; where their alumni go on afterwards; and the department as a whole. But none of them — aside from maybe the cohort you end up with, but that’s not in your control — seemed to be as make-or-break to the graduate experience than picking the right person to study under and to have in your corner. (2) No one told me that it would be so formative for my undergrad experience, too. In fact, I wish someone had told me this in high school, beyond the usual spiel on getting to know two or three teachers well enough so someone could write me strong letters of recommendation by the time college applications rolled around.

I transferred to my alma mater, which meant I knew no one in the department, I was weary about having to put myself out there again, and I was nervous about having such a limited amount of time to build, then cultivate, a support system from the ground up. These reasons compounded my anxiety about approaching any professor in this new environment, which meant seeking out a mentor or an adviser, or even thinking about having either one, was absolutely out of the question. As it turned out, though, there hadn’t even been any formal process; it just… sort of happened. I was in and out of office hours, then we were speaking more about what I wanted out of my degree and why, and the next thing I knew, it was the spring of 2016 and I finally gathered the courage to ask for a more challenging research opportunity.

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I think some part of any relationship with a mentor or academic adviser will always include wanting to please them: we want to tackle the more difficult research question to prove that we can; we want to be the one to offer a new — or maybe other, nuanced — perspective; we want to show that we can juggle the demands of research and still perform at maximum capacity in lectures and look like we’ve got everything held together. In short, part of us will always want to prove that we were worth their time — that it was worth it to invest in us. Maybe that’s why “[academic] achievement, grade point average, school absence, drop out rates, satisfaction with the university academic experience, attitude towards the school, time spent on educational pursuits, and number of semesters to graduation were all positively related to academic mentoring.” (3) There’s now someone outside ourselves, our family, and our friends who is paying attention.

Graduate school began casting a longer and longer shadow, and the research papers started getting longer, too. And, for me, the imposter syndrome was stronger than ever, despite evidence that my mentor — and even other members of my faculty — believed in me. Having exhausted all possible undergraduate classes that I could have taken with him, my mentor offered to me, at the end of fall 2016, the chance to take a graduate-level seminar in the winter. Flattered and encouraged, I took it, but I was already doubting myself by the end of that first class. Things came to a head maybe three weeks in, before I realised that really, the only two people whose opinions mattered regarding this seminar were his and my own, and not any of my peers: I wasn’t there to impress them (as much as I wanted to, to prove that I deserved that spot), I was there to do good work and prove myself to myself and to my mentor. I was starting to feel almost like a fraud, not unlike the baby who got invited to sit at the big kids’ table and was then very lost because she couldn’t understand anything. I walked into office hours full of self-doubt and not a small amount of (academic) insecurity, and walked out with a new appreciation for a professor with a willingness to be receptive to such concerns. Not that he hadn’t been humanised for me before this point, but having someone listen to me and understand where I was coming from, and not dismiss those feelings while still boosting my confidence, really meant a lot; and I was very grateful to be able to share these concerns with him and not feel like I was being ungrateful for the opportunity he’d given me.

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This it not at all to say that it was all smooth sailing. For all intents and purposes, my mentor is an Ivy League-educated white man whose art historical lineage is as white and prestigious and conservative and traditional as it gets. It’s intimidating, and impressive, and something I’ve tried very hard not to absorb too much. The differences in the identities we carry alone already account for points of tension, because any aspect of my personal existence is always political, and I can never separate myself from feminist thinking or intersectionality. This happened just the once, but I’ve had to defend my choice to take a decidedly feminist standpoint and argue about how it wasn’t just projecting a contemporary viewpoint on an early modern artist. And that was when I learned how important it was to be able to push back against someone, and not feel afraid to do so. It’s so easy to get caught up in this dynamic and feel like you have to do everything a mentor or adviser says, but I feel like there’s no room for growth there, or passion, and no independence. What really made our system work for me was that both of us compromised — topics, edits, approaches, sources — and both of us were learning — he isn’t a Hispanicist and I aspire to be one — and I never felt like I was being turned toward something I didn’t want to do or be. I was given the space to flourish, which overall impacted my experience at my alma mater positively.

I’m also very, very lucky to be able to say that several other professors at my alma mater have taken on a mentorship role for me in ways that my mentor couldn’t because he is neither a woman nor Asian, and I know that my experience isn’t the typical undergraduate experience, but I wish it were more normalised! I hear so many stories about mentors in grad/postgrad, but only ever the occasional story from undergrad — it is so important, but most of all, so empowering to know that you have someone in your corner to support you and speak up for you, to put you forward for opportunities you may not see for yourself, to be resource and champion both. He normalised me challenging myself to be better. I wanted to push — to take more seminars, to take on independent research projects — because now I knew I could. It’s a feeling I’m sure I will never stop being thankful for. I’m not looking to have the same experience in grad school, after all, no two people are exactly alike; at least now, though, I have a very good idea of what I’m going to be looking for.

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(1) Though this article focuses on undergraduate mentorship in the sciences, this distinction between research adviser and mentor is helpful to keep in mind here (emphasis mine): “Research advisers’ responsibility is to facilitate their students’ education in the research enterprise – guiding students from the formulation of research questions through designs and analysis stages and finally to the interpretation of the findings as well as their integration into the greater body of knowledge providing the context of the research… A mentor in contrast has significant investment in his/her students’ personal development, which extends well beyond a concern for the adequate attainment of degree requirements or the completion of a research thesis. An academic or research adviser may evolve into a mentor for a student, but the mentoring relationship becomes more clearly characterized by the intertwining of professional and personal features.” Julio J Ramirez, “The Intentional Mentor: Effective Mentorship of Undergraduate Science Students,” Journal of Undergraduate Neuroscience Education 11, no. 1 (2012): A55-A63.

(2) Not to show off my Marvel fangirl or anything, but attributing this much power to one person does, in fact, come with great responsibility. A few days ago, a friend of mine shared on Facebook an article called “Abusers and Enablers in Faculty Culture,” which talks about the power imbalance created by such a dynamic, and how very, very quickly that imbalance can be exploited.

(3) Edgar C. J. Long, Jessica Fish, Lee Kuhn, and John Sowders, “Mentoring Undergraduates: Professors Strategically Guiding the Next Generation of Professionals,” Michigan Family Review 14, no. 1 (2010).