Surviving and Thriving as a URM Astro|Physics Student, Part 6: Being a Mentee
What does it mean to be mentored? What role do you play?
Also see earlier parts of this series:
I: Surviving Undergraduate Coursework
II: Doing Research as a URM astro/physics student
III: Understand what affirmative action REALLY is
playlist: My #BlackandSTEM Playlist
IV: Endless Death Seems Endlessly Endless
V: Applying to Grad School
While I have, for months, okay almost a year, been planning to write about how to be a graduate student and this is not that entry, this is actually an important entry for graduate students, especially those who did not have the luck of getting good advising in college. (Which is many people — if that’s you, you’re not alone!) It’s about how to be a mentee — a person who is gaining advice and experience at the hands of someone who has been around the block a few times.
Below I talk a bit about finding mentors, how you should treat your mentor, what to expect from a mentor, and some basic professionalism that can carry you a long way. This is maybe my most tough love-ish entry so far, but so much of what I say here is stuff that I didn’t understand at all when I was younger, and I wish someone had broken it down for me!
Finding mentors
I think seeking out mentors is a good and important activity. For those who are marginalized, mentoring can be especially important for success, especially from a person who shares their experiences, or similar ones, of marginalization. But I think there are good ways to seek out a mentor and then not so good ways.
As one of the only Black women in my field, I get a TON of requests for my time. I regularly get emails asking me to be penpals with elementary, middle school, and high school students. I also get emails from undergraduates asking me for advice. With some frequency I get emails from white people (undergrads through faculty) asking me for resources that they could get from other white people or from reading my blog.
I can’t say yes to everything. And it’s my life. It’s my prerogative to choose what I say yes to and what I don’t. I do say yes to Black, Latinx, and Native American student emergencies that I can help with quickly. I triage when I can — like if the request is from a Black student interested doing exoplanet research, I will try connect them with (Black) folks doing exoplanet research. If the student needs help with someone, and I don’t have a great relationship with that person, I might ask a friend of mine to see if they can get it sorted.
I also often say yes to Black, Native American, and Latinx students who are on my home campus. I don’t say yes to white women as often because usually there is someone else who can help them. The same is not true for racialized minorities.
I have never said yes to people who randomly email me and say, “Will you be my mentor?” I don’t have time for people who may be trying to collect me for their CV and don’t have a specific need for my fairly unusual skillset. That is how that question comes across.
Have a specific ask. Like say that you really need to talk to someone who shares their background or you have a specific need, like you don’t understand how to do the next step of your journey and are not sure who to ask. If someone says, “tell me by e-mail” and doesn’t make time to meet in person or talk on the phone, don’t take it personally. They’re probably busy, including with things that may not be public information.
While I was on the job market this year, I met with students during my lunch break in the middle of grueling 48 hour interviews. Don’t expect everyone to be like that. Don’t even expect me to be like that in future. It’s hard.
Accept that sometimes someone will do you a big favor once, and they may not be willing or interested in repeating it. That’s okay. Other folks are out there!
How you treat your mentor
I end up in a mentoring position with people that I think I can continue to be in a position to help, who I click with, and who actually at least sometimes takes my advice! Am I establishing that kind of relationship with you? A few clues: whether I ask you to keep me posted on how things are going, whether I actively check in with you, whether I tell you to let me know if you need anything.
I think it’s great that students are now using the internet so actively to find help with issues that might come up for them. But they do need to keep in mind that prospective mentors are still people with their own lives, their own feelings, their own schedules. There are things going on for them that you do not know about. We have family members who are dying, children who are struggling, siblings with mental illnesses that require care from us, etc. We also have research/paid work we want to do! So, please be respectful and mindful of that and be aware that often times you are asking us for free labor that both takes up time and is emotionally challenging work. Being respectful of that includes showing up to meetings on time and canceling with reasonable notice. Also, don’t hide things from your mentor. That makes it impossible for us to properly advise you. If you’re seeking help with a situation, you have to tell us everything that is relevant to addressing it, not just parts of it.
As the mentee it is critical to remember that mentoring is a gift, not an entitlement, and that women of color especially get a lot of requests. Nobody is your mammy. Allow for the possibility that your mentor is human, just like you. Remember to say thank you. You don’t have to spend money saying thank you, although when I get cards via snail mail, I’ll be honest and say I love it.
How you should expect to be treated by your mentor
Let me say off the bat that abuse is completely unacceptable. A couple of years ago I wrote an entry that multiple students have told me was useful to them, with signs that you may be experiencing academic abuse. I won’t repeat that content here.
But it is important to understand the difference between abuse and not getting what you want. Your mentor/advisor is not there to spoon feed you, work for you, or do exactly what you say when you say it. They are there to support you achieving your personal goals, to the extent that they are personally able. You will often not be able to judge what their limits are, and you shouldn’t try in most cases. If you have a formal academic relationship with them, they have certain responsibilities to you. If your relationship with them is informal, you have to accept what they can offer.
Despite the possibility that the relationship is not institutionally formalized, first and foremost, you should expect your mentor to respect boundaries. They should not be calling you at 3 AM. During conferences, use your own best judgment about whether an invitation to their hotel room is ever appropriate — like maybe they are in a suite where there is a sitting room. It may not be, and you’re allowed to say no/suggest alternate venues for meeting. Your mentor should ask if it is okay to give you a hug before hugging you. You should never feel creeped out by someone. You should never feel like you owe your mentor regular emotional support. They are there for you, not the other way around.
You can expect that your mentor will make careful decisions about how they can help you or if they can help you. They may come up with a different strategy than the one you had in mind, and if you’re unsure why, feel free to ask. You can learn how to mentor from being a curious mentee. Be aware that they are usually doing complicated political calculations that involve power dynamics that may be relatively foreign to your own knowledge base or experience. Someone may be in a position of seniority relative to you and still abe vulnerable in ways that you are familiar with as well as in ways that you don’t yet understand. Often, your mentor is also someone else’s mentee.
Your mentor should be clear when they are saying no to you. When they say yes to something, they should follow through. That said, they’re busy and will forget things. Remind them of important pending deadlines. For example: need a letter? Ask them with at least a month to go whether they think they could write you a strong letter. If they say yes, give them the due date and clear instructions for how to send the letter in. One or two weeks before the deadline, send them a reminder and let them know to be in touch if they have questions.
If they’ve agreed to write you a letter, they should write you a positive but honest one. Know that even if your mentor is a Nobel Laureate, that will not open all doors for you. (I hear it helps though.)
Your mentor should respect your unique perspective as a minority and should not be trying to convince you that racism, sexism, transphobia, homophobia, ableism, etc. are less insidious than you know them to be.
It is often the case that mentor-mentee relationships bleed into friendship. Sometimes that’s okay, especially if you happen to be close in age or both well into adulthood — like you’re both past your early 20s. But make sure you feel empowered as an equal in the context of that friendship, otherwise it’s not actually a friendship.
Don’t be afraid to ask for things, and don’t automatically take it personally when someone says “no.” They may wish they could say yes and just find that, for a variety of reasons, they are not in a position to at a given point in time.
Professionalism
Foregrounding the following because it is maybe one of the most important things a student can do: if your mentor has asked you to read something or prepare something for a meeting with them, don’t wait to do it until the day before, unless you know, you set aside 8 hours the day before, and you’re the kind of person who can really go hard like that. Even then, I actually wouldn’t advise that. Intellectual work takes time to unspool and ferment in our minds. If you are preparing to present a journal paper, read it three times: once for 5–10 minutes with a focus on the abstract, introduction and conclusions; once for half an hour with a closer look at the details; a third time where you are working through the many things you didn’t understand on reads one and two. (Which, if you’re like me, could be most things in many of the papers you read!) You should also look up foundational papers that the journal paper cites. Show the advisor that you really put the work in and that you respect the time they are spending with you. This is how you learn the background science of your field, and it’s much more important than textbooks 90% of the time.
If your mentor has hooked you up with a job or an internship, it’s important to honor the work they have put in for you. If your mentor has helped connect you with a job opportunity, a mentoring opportunity, or something like that, follow up. Don’t drop the ball. And make sure to say thank you.
If your mentor or friend has helped get you a job through their connections, do the job well. They have vouched for you, and how you behave will affect whether your supervisors will take their word as seriously about other candidates in future. You are responsible for living up to the strong recommendation that you asked your mentor or friend to make on your behalf.
When you are asked to make a commitment to something, think carefully about whether you can actually follow through before saying yes. If there is a time limit, or you have needs related to fulfilling the commitment, be up front about it. Once you make a commitment to do something, follow through. If you are having a hard time doing so, alert the person you committed to immediately.
If you do have to let go of a responsibility, be mindful of how that will affect other people and of the circumstances they may be in when you tell them. (Did they just announce that their mom is in the hospital? Then it can probably wait, right?)
Give due notice. This is true for research positions, volunteer opportunities, and academic program participation. You should give folks a month’s notice if possible, but at the very least two weeks. Besides being respectful of other people’s time and energy, this will also give them an opportunity to find you help that you may not have even realized that they can offer you.
From my point of view there are a couple of reasons why it’s good to keep professionalism in mind:
1. It’s just decent.
2. Handled the right way, a mentor or a reference can be useful to you for years to come. Burning bridges unnecessarily is silly. ❤
