Not That Kind of Doctor - Mentorship

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12/14/2022 Added

3 Plays

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Mentorship - Ph.D. discussions with Nicholas Husbye and Guy Trainin. www.youtube.com/@tltenotthatkindofdoctor and https://mediahub.unl.edu/channels/42980

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[00:00:00.000](upbeat groovy music)
[00:00:09.000]Are we ready?
[00:00:10.110]We are ready. Okay. So, question.
[00:00:11.670]Yes.
[00:00:12.503]How do you know when I'm seeking out information from you?
[00:00:16.410]What are your telltale signs when you see me
[00:00:18.030]and you're like, "Oh, Nick wants to know something"?
[00:00:21.540]Eye contact and just the question, I think.
[00:00:26.010]I do accost you with questions quite a bit initially.
[00:00:28.770]It's not even like, "Hi, Guy!"
[00:00:30.120]It's, "How do I do this?"
[00:00:32.370]Well...
[00:00:33.203]"How does this structure work?"
[00:00:35.490]That's what you do, right?
[00:00:37.740]That's how you communicate.
[00:00:40.800]I mean, the most important thing is to ask a question!
[00:00:43.500]I communicate by accosting people with inquiries.
[00:00:48.870]Questioning is my love language.
[00:00:51.960]All right! I'll take that. That's what it is.
[00:00:53.360]If I don't question you, you don't matter to me.
[00:00:56.220]You are dead to me.
[00:00:58.154](Guy laughing)
[00:01:00.000]So how did that work for you as a graduate student?
[00:01:05.250]I mean, it worked...
[00:01:06.900]Look, I was really fortunate in terms of stars aligning,
[00:01:11.550]in terms of mentorship,
[00:01:12.960]in terms of people who were helping me figure things out.
[00:01:19.590]Because like we've talked about,
[00:01:22.410]I was going to grad school
[00:01:23.640]as a first generation college student.
[00:01:26.040]I was the first in my family to graduate from undergrad,
[00:01:29.190]the first to get a master's degree,
[00:01:30.630]which I actually didn't get.
[00:01:31.920]Yeah.
[00:01:32.940]They canceled my capstone class
[00:01:35.760]the summer before I was gonna go get my PhD.
[00:01:38.820]So there was that, but I was the first
[00:01:40.140]to go get this advanced degree.
[00:01:42.210]So I had no...
[00:01:46.230]I asked a lot of questions
[00:01:47.063]'cause I had no problem looking stupid.
[00:01:49.560]I wasn't worried about that.
[00:01:50.940]The whole, "Don't ask that question
[00:01:53.040]'cause I might look stupid," I didn't care.
[00:01:54.510]I don't know this answer,
[00:01:56.550]and if I screw up I'm gonna look even more stupid
[00:01:59.730]than I would if I didn't.
[00:02:00.960]So I was really lucky to have folks who
[00:02:08.640]put up with a lot of questions.
[00:02:11.640]Poor James Damico.
[00:02:13.350]Poor Karen Wohlwend.
[00:02:14.550]Poor Larry McAleski.
[00:02:16.530]I'm sorry if you ever see this.
[00:02:20.940]Yikes.
[00:02:21.960]So for me it was a little bit different
[00:02:24.180]because as I've shared, coming from another country
[00:02:27.390]and not knowing a lot about graduate school,
[00:02:30.000]this was all kind of a black box.
[00:02:33.690]And so I walked in, but I got lucky in many ways.
[00:02:38.910]I was slotted to work with my dean,
[00:02:41.850]who was a new dean, on a project.
[00:02:43.950]So I had access to the dean on a fairly-
[00:02:47.130]At least once a week.
[00:02:49.549]And it's a dean of a graduate school,
[00:02:50.880]so it's not a huge school,
[00:02:52.590]so I got a lot of interactions early.
[00:02:55.770]And then my first advisor was actually graduate chair,
[00:03:00.720]and he was a talker.
[00:03:01.920]So Don McMillan, thank you.
[00:03:05.337]All the shout outs in this episode, folks.
[00:03:07.410]I did not actually need to ask a lot of questions.
[00:03:10.200]I just got a lot of information fairly quickly
[00:03:16.013]in ways that allowed me to start figuring things out.
[00:03:20.730]And one of the times that I understood
[00:03:23.881]how much I've learned about the inner workings
[00:03:27.210]of even academia,
[00:03:28.320]which is an important part of mentorship
[00:03:30.480]because classes will teach you
[00:03:32.010]the things you need to know academically,
[00:03:34.080]but mentorship will teach you all the other things
[00:03:37.140]you need to figure out.
[00:03:38.310]Publishing and getting around
[00:03:41.100]and relationship with faculty and all of these other things
[00:03:45.300]that are intangibles of sorts.
[00:03:48.090]And we had an interview for somebody who was coming in
[00:03:53.070]to get a job.
[00:03:54.720]I was in my, I think in my last year, my fourth year.
[00:03:58.170]And so...
[00:04:02.250]She was in an interview
[00:04:03.240]and she wanted to talk to some graduate students,
[00:04:05.370]and I realized, we were talking and she said,
[00:04:09.217]"How do you know so much about the way that department,
[00:04:11.910]the college and the department works?"
[00:04:14.160]And I'm like, "I don't know, it's been shared with me."
[00:04:18.480]One of the things though, Bob Celty, who was a dean,
[00:04:22.020]was a great mentor, and also challenging at times,
[00:04:27.360]but he was great because he was with complete transparency.
[00:04:31.500]So we would hear about everything,
[00:04:33.330]including his wife was sick at the time,
[00:04:35.550]that would come to an email to everybody
[00:04:38.160]and there would be a five page email
[00:04:40.410]that detailed everything happening in the college,
[00:04:42.990]personal, public, plans for the fu-
[00:04:45.840]Everything was in the same email.
[00:04:47.550]So you got a lot of information you can start sorting out.
[00:04:50.670]Now, in my first year, that was a little bit scary
[00:04:52.890]because I had to read this very long email
[00:04:55.470]and figure out where do I need to be and when,
[00:04:57.630]because I'm also working with the dean on a project.
[00:05:00.690]So I gotta read this long thing and figure out,
[00:05:02.977]"Oh, on Wednesday we have a meeting.
[00:05:05.220]That Tuesday thing, that's for senior faculty.
[00:05:07.560]I am not included in that meeting."
[00:05:09.600]There were moments where it was uncomfortable
[00:05:11.850]and I had friends to go back- Where do I need to be?
[00:05:13.265]Yes. And this was before
[00:05:14.370]the calendar invite, right?
[00:05:15.510]Yeah, long before the calendar invite.
[00:05:17.970]So yes, I had to figure out a lot, but that was great.
[00:05:22.110]So when we think about mentorship,
[00:05:24.480]I always think about formal and informal,
[00:05:26.850]because often, definitely in graduate school,
[00:05:29.490]but often even when you get your first job,
[00:05:31.830]you get formal mentoring.
[00:05:33.630]There's somebody who hopefully you
[00:05:37.350]are at least part of selecting
[00:05:41.130]that will help you figure things out.
[00:05:43.980]And then you have a whole group of people potentially
[00:05:47.400]that can be mentors that emerge at critical points
[00:05:51.180]or the people you consult with,
[00:05:52.980]but are not formally designated to be that.
[00:05:55.620]It's people whose advice you seek at critical junctures
[00:06:00.060]or as an ongoing conversation,
[00:06:02.153]so you expand kind of your network
[00:06:06.360]of people who can inform you about different things.
[00:06:11.850]Obviously you got lucky, but if you were advising
[00:06:15.780]somebody who's thinking about graduate school,
[00:06:18.180]how would you advise them to start seeking a mentor?
[00:06:22.710]I think the first thing to be thinking about
[00:06:27.000]is at what levels do you need mentorship, right?
[00:06:32.070]As a graduate student,
[00:06:34.080]James Damico is kind of my structural mentor.
[00:06:36.540]What is this program going to look like?
[00:06:38.580]What are the checkpoints?
[00:06:40.710]How do I move through them?
[00:06:42.630]What am I expected to do to complete this degree?
[00:06:45.720]If I don't have funding, what do I do?
[00:06:48.390]All of that kind of stuff.
[00:06:49.290]And he was very much kind of
[00:06:52.470]the mentor helping me think through classes
[00:06:56.520]and comps in those gatekeeper kinds of things.
[00:06:59.190]And then Karen Wohlwend was this kind of brilliant.
[00:07:03.840]She's not kind of, she's just brilliant, no hedging.
[00:07:06.990]Mentor around technical work.
[00:07:09.570]What does the work of being a professor
[00:07:13.290]or being an academic actually look like?
[00:07:15.450]How do you do a manuscript review for a journal?
[00:07:20.670]What does that look like?
[00:07:21.840]What's actually productive?
[00:07:23.340]And I remember her sitting down with me
[00:07:26.550]to do a journal review, we co-reviewed this manuscript,
[00:07:33.210]and I still think about that moment.
[00:07:36.120]That's still how I begin to structure
[00:07:40.560]my manuscript reviews, right?
[00:07:43.320]When I was going on the job market,
[00:07:45.801]I just remember her going,
[00:07:48.397]"You will not eat a salad at dinner.
[00:07:51.600]You will not eat a salad.
[00:07:53.100]Pick something small because you're only gonna get in
[00:07:55.770]small bites in between questions."
[00:07:58.740]So that kind of technical mentoring was so important.
[00:08:02.610]And then like Larry McAleski was
[00:08:08.730]so important in terms of carving out your niche,
[00:08:15.000]even when that is...
[00:08:17.880]He was always very pragmatic to me,
[00:08:20.340]thinking about, "Okay, we're in academia,
[00:08:22.710]here's all of this,
[00:08:23.730]but what does this look like on the ground?
[00:08:25.980]How do you carve out that space?
[00:08:28.410]So what? Who cares?"
[00:08:30.900]Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
[00:08:33.210]Not to get caught up so much in
[00:08:36.758]the pomp and circumstances of academia.
[00:08:39.300]So I think in terms of
[00:08:43.860]when you're thinking about mentorship,
[00:08:48.180]where is it that you wanna grow, right?
[00:08:50.940]Where is it that, and you don't know what you don't know,
[00:08:54.810]but you probably have inklings
[00:08:56.850]of what you don't know, right?
[00:08:58.320]And who is gonna be able to help you to do that work.
[00:09:02.580]And it's really important, I mean, going back to my point,
[00:09:06.270]I was lucky because I got a lot of information
[00:09:09.390]just almost by osmosis and just being there
[00:09:12.780]and willing to spend the time.
[00:09:14.790]So one of the things I was willing to do
[00:09:16.950]is I was willing to go into Don McMillan's office
[00:09:20.010]and sit there for 45 minutes just listening,
[00:09:23.850]have a small question that I came with
[00:09:25.920]and just listening to everything else that comes up
[00:09:29.370]and just kind of simmering in it
[00:09:33.030]and learning about the way academia worked
[00:09:35.070]because it mostly worked through that office
[00:09:37.080]and the dean's office.
[00:09:37.980]So I was at the two junctures,
[00:09:39.690]at least in a graduate school of education,
[00:09:41.370]the graduate chair and the dean is where things happen.
[00:09:44.880]And so I got to see a lot of things firsthand,
[00:09:50.130]but the ability to ask questions I think is critical.
[00:09:53.040]And having, as a mentor,
[00:09:54.600]somebody you feel comfortable asking questions,
[00:09:57.360]that you are feeling like they're willing to take the time
[00:10:01.350]and spend half an hour with you, or maybe more,
[00:10:03.840]not just in the formal occasions,
[00:10:05.520]but actually in all of these informal occasions
[00:10:08.910]to bring you in and to explain how this works
[00:10:11.880]and what you need to do.
[00:10:13.860]Recently I've been working on a hiring committee
[00:10:17.040]and there's a graduate student on the hiring committee,
[00:10:19.230]which is by the way, highly recommended
[00:10:20.940]if you get to do that.
[00:10:21.991]And she came to me and said,
[00:10:26.617]"I'm on this committee, there's this volume of material,
[00:10:29.280]I'm a second year doctoral student, what do I look at?"
[00:10:31.920]And so we sat together for about 15 minutes.
[00:10:34.980]That's sometimes all it takes.
[00:10:36.180]And I said, "Here are some things you can do
[00:10:37.770]as a graduate student.
[00:10:39.120]In looking at these files, obviously you can't look at it
[00:10:42.030]as a faculty with 20 years experience,
[00:10:44.640]that's not what we expect from you,
[00:10:46.080]but there are certain insights
[00:10:47.640]that you can have as a graduate student
[00:10:49.500]that none of us can have,
[00:10:50.640]because it's been a while for all of us."
[00:10:52.650]And so those conversations,
[00:10:55.560]taking the time to have that short or long conversation
[00:10:58.440]is really, really important.
[00:11:00.090]And if you choose a mentor
[00:11:02.220]that you start feeling uncomfortable about asking questions,
[00:11:04.830]that's probably, I would argue, the wrong mentor.
[00:11:07.590]And you need to think about,
[00:11:09.187]"Who in my circle is somebody that I feel comfortable
[00:11:15.090]having these conversations with?"
[00:11:16.740]And start making this adjustment.
[00:11:19.620]Because it's not functional
[00:11:21.750]to not be able to ask these questions
[00:11:23.730]because then you're under prepared
[00:11:24.870]for everything that comes next.
[00:11:26.520]Well, and I think too, this notion of...
[00:11:29.850]Thinking back to my undergraduate experiences
[00:11:32.490]working with Elizabeth Heilman
[00:11:34.800]and Pat Edwards when I was at Michigan State,
[00:11:37.470]one of the things that really became apparent to me
[00:11:42.840]is what is...
[00:11:47.370]Mentorship...
[00:11:49.200]I always wanna avoid talking about comfort in mentorship,
[00:11:51.810]because there should be some level of discomfort.
[00:11:54.000]There should be some level of not being comfortable,
[00:11:58.530]because you are kind of leveraging that relationship
[00:12:03.000]to make you a better version of yourself,
[00:12:06.270]to do better versions of your previous and past work.
[00:12:11.460]And one of the things that those two really taught me
[00:12:18.240]was how to manage my mentorship.
[00:12:24.030]Manage like do not be afraid to ask for what I need.
[00:12:29.892]And whether or not they responded to that
[00:12:33.840]in ways that were adequate or not
[00:12:37.320]were indicators of whether or not that mentorship
[00:12:39.900]should continue or not.
[00:12:41.730]But that was a really different
[00:12:44.250]kind of power relationship for me.
[00:12:46.020]I remember how shocking that was.
[00:12:49.170]And I think I would've-
[00:12:50.746]What do you mean what do you mean by shocking?
[00:12:52.470]Well, because when you tend to think of like...
[00:12:56.190]When you tend to think of your advisor
[00:12:58.140]or there's always, we have to recognize the power
[00:13:00.990]relationships there, right? Absolutely.
[00:13:02.280]Like, "That is the person."
[00:13:05.850]But for both of them,
[00:13:08.310]and at such a critical juncture in my educational career,
[00:13:14.040]literally sitting down and saying,
[00:13:15.997]"Okay, so this is what I'm envisioning,
[00:13:18.120]what are you envisioning?"
[00:13:20.550]And I think if it would've been just one,
[00:13:22.050]that would've been like, "Oh, it's an anomaly,"
[00:13:23.790]but it happened at the same time.
[00:13:25.590]And both of them had a very similar approach to mentorship,
[00:13:28.410]but were very people unto themselves, right?
[00:13:31.140]Yeah, yeah.
[00:13:31.973]And that really positioned me to think through
[00:13:37.140]how to manage and show up
[00:13:43.470]to ask for what I needed in mentorships
[00:13:48.690]in ways that I might not have otherwise, right?
[00:13:55.890]Yes, I don't know what I don't know,
[00:13:59.250]but I can describe the area
[00:14:02.130]around that hole in my knowledge, that gap in my knowledge.
[00:14:06.540]And they're normally able to like figure out,
[00:14:09.517]"Oh, that's what that is," right?
[00:14:13.530]And so that was really foundational for me
[00:14:17.730]to be able to show up and ask those questions
[00:14:22.590]and kind of manage to an extent,
[00:14:29.520]be in control of my own mentorship, not just, "Mentor me!"
[00:14:34.440]Yes. "Love me!"
[00:14:36.330]Well, that's a different issue altogether.
[00:14:38.303]That is a different issue altogether.
[00:14:41.130]Therapist.
[00:14:41.963]So your mentor does not have to love you.
[00:14:43.920]They don't! But they do have to
[00:14:46.320]answer your questions.
[00:14:47.370]They have to love though the idea of who you will become.
[00:14:52.410]Yes.
[00:14:53.730]And if they don't love the idea of who you will become,
[00:14:56.550]I would argue you need to find a different mentor.
[00:14:59.190]No, I completely agree.
[00:15:00.750]So if you're starting to
[00:15:01.680]feel that drift, yes. This is my angry face.
[00:15:03.900]If you start feeling that drift
[00:15:05.490]where somebody's trying to take you somewhere
[00:15:07.530]that you really don't want to go,
[00:15:09.810]that's the time to have some serious conversations.
[00:15:13.290]GTFO.
[00:15:15.840]No, don't ask me to describe it.
[00:15:17.340]Okay. If you know, you know.
[00:15:18.774](Guy laughing)
[00:15:21.060]I do not know,
[00:15:22.020]so I will wonder about this the rest of the day.
[00:15:24.492]But-
[00:15:26.460]Tell Guy what it is in the comments.
[00:15:29.130]All right!
[00:15:31.620]I will look for that.
[00:15:33.030]So there's this idea of mentorship
[00:15:37.380]and you need to come into the mentorship,
[00:15:39.420]this is what I'm hearing,
[00:15:41.070]asking the questions and really creating that structure.
[00:15:45.030]Because otherwise a mentor will take you
[00:15:48.030]in the direction they're thinking about.
[00:15:49.620]They will have a vision for you,
[00:15:51.750]but that might not fit for you.
[00:15:53.310]And what you need to explore is that dance of
[00:15:56.460]there is a power imbalance, but you have an agenda.
[00:15:59.910]And what I kept saying,
[00:16:01.200]especially as graduate chair in our department,
[00:16:04.080]to graduate students who are unsure about their mentors,
[00:16:07.770]their formal mentors, and they came to ask about,
[00:16:10.747]"Should I stay? Should I change?"
[00:16:13.230]My usual refrain is, it is your degree,
[00:16:16.650]or if you are a young faculty member,
[00:16:19.650]it is your tenure process.
[00:16:21.360]And if that relationship is not working,
[00:16:23.820]you should get a relationship that is working
[00:16:26.040]because that person who's mentoring you
[00:16:27.810]already has the degree or already has tenure
[00:16:30.660]and has been promoted.
[00:16:31.950]So they're where they need to be.
[00:16:33.480]You need to get where you need to be.
[00:16:35.003]If that mentorship is not working,
[00:16:38.400]and obviously that's not an easy decision
[00:16:40.500]and not a decision you make on a dime
[00:16:42.120]and you don't change mentors five, seven times,
[00:16:44.370]but if that relationship over time
[00:16:46.530]is not proving productive, you really do need to change it.
[00:16:50.190]Because you will not be successful
[00:16:52.080]if it's somebody you don't feel comfortable
[00:16:53.640]having conversations with,
[00:16:55.080]they're not answering the questions you have
[00:16:57.090]in ways that help you, then it's just not gonna work.
[00:17:01.740]I mean, it is very complicated at that moment
[00:17:04.770]because there's emotions and there's the power imbalance.
[00:17:07.620]So saying to somebody who has more power than you
[00:17:09.540]and has a decision and will affect whatever happens to you
[00:17:14.220]is always hard,
[00:17:16.800]but if you need the change, you need the change.
[00:17:19.770]Right, I mean, 'cause ultimately
[00:17:22.620]a graduate program is like
[00:17:28.799]a promise to your future self.
[00:17:30.000]It's who you want to become.
[00:17:32.880]And mentorship is really about people supporting that vision
[00:17:37.590]and moving you toward that goal.
[00:17:39.840]So if there's a disconnect in terms of
[00:17:42.930]the person you want to become
[00:17:44.910]through your engagement in this PhD program,
[00:17:47.059]EDD program, master's program, whatever it is,
[00:17:51.000]that's a core problem, right?
[00:17:54.000]So when you are thinking about,
[00:17:57.147]and I think we talked about this in a previous podcast,
[00:17:59.460]when you're thinking about where you're applying,
[00:18:01.890]reaching out to people and saying,
[00:18:06.187]"What is your mentorship style?
[00:18:07.830]This is what I want to do.
[00:18:09.180]How will you help me work towards this?
[00:18:13.170]How will you help me get to that place?"
[00:18:15.960]Because ultimately that's your goal, right?
[00:18:19.620]And a good test of that would be
[00:18:22.380]if you're applying for an institution
[00:18:24.120]and you're thinking of somebody as a mentor,
[00:18:27.270]to have a conversation, an email conversation is one,
[00:18:30.450]a physical conversation,
[00:18:31.710]whether it is through electronic means or in person,
[00:18:34.650]is even more powerful.
[00:18:37.530]And it'll immediately tell you,
[00:18:39.120]if somebody says, "No, I don't have time for you,"
[00:18:41.550]it doesn't mean they will not be a good mentor,
[00:18:43.740]but it's at least a sign of,
[00:18:46.200]I don't know if this is the right person for you,
[00:18:48.690]because right now they don't have time.
[00:18:51.420]Now, I know people feel very differently about their time.
[00:18:54.360]I can see that face, but-
[00:18:56.430]No, do you know what this face is?
[00:18:58.350]This face is, "The next two weeks-"
[00:19:00.480]We're filming this two weeks before Thanksgiving.
[00:19:03.210]Yes, it depends on when.
[00:19:05.640]Literally my calendar is just block
[00:19:07.320]after block after block.
[00:19:08.340]And so I have sent out that email this week.
[00:19:10.560]Like, "I don't have time now."
[00:19:12.607]"But..." "But..."
[00:19:13.800]Yes, "I will be happy to talk to you-"
[00:19:15.727]"I've already drafted and saved an email
[00:19:18.750]that we'll send to you on December 2nd
[00:19:20.173]and we can talk then, but I need to get through."
[00:19:23.280]I mean, do not expect people
[00:19:24.680]to be able to talk to you on a dime.
[00:19:26.280]Like, you email me today, I'm super happy,
[00:19:29.970]but it might take two or three weeks
[00:19:31.530]until we have free time.
[00:19:33.570]But I will have to say, I have a number of graduate students
[00:19:36.840]right now in our programs that are close to finishing
[00:19:39.360]where the relationship started with a coffee,
[00:19:44.010]even if they drove down from South Dakota,
[00:19:46.290]a coffee where they came to town, they saw town,
[00:19:49.560]they talked to me, they talked to a few other people
[00:19:51.990]and they found their place here.
[00:19:53.550]But those were really, really productive.
[00:19:55.800]By the way, it's a great way to recruit too.
[00:19:57.780]But you get a sense...
[00:20:00.870]Always recruiting.
[00:20:01.703]Always recruiting. ABR.
[00:20:03.450]Yes. Always be recruiting.
[00:20:04.283]I'm full of the acronyms today.
[00:20:05.850]Yes, and so from my perspective, at least,
[00:20:11.580]you want to have that conversation.
[00:20:13.230]You want to feel that somebody is really interested in you.
[00:20:15.840]They have a vision that you can share,
[00:20:17.730]even if it's very, very, very entry vision.
[00:20:20.940]Because often when I talk to
[00:20:22.770]potential doctoral students especially,
[00:20:26.490]they have a vision that's very limited.
[00:20:28.290]Because if nobody in your family
[00:20:31.140]has ever done anything like that,
[00:20:33.030]and even again, as my case,
[00:20:34.680]both my parents have graduate degrees,
[00:20:38.040]my dad was a researcher, I knew nothing.
[00:20:40.260]I needed to be walked through the process.
[00:20:42.360]What are the expectations?
[00:20:44.070]What can it look like?
[00:20:46.110]What am I able to do?
[00:20:47.580]Because when I came, I thought,
[00:20:48.997]"I'm coming for a master's.
[00:20:50.280]I'm coming for one year,
[00:20:51.240]and then I'm going back into teaching."
[00:20:53.310]And it did not turn out that way.
[00:20:55.283]I mean, I am teaching, but at the university level.
[00:20:59.790]So these things are not necessarily what you walk in in.
[00:21:04.050]So often I will have that conversation
[00:21:07.290]and just suggest a few things.
[00:21:08.760]A few ideas to think about.
[00:21:11.040]Not necessarily, "You have to do this,"
[00:21:13.620]but, "Here's some things I know that happen to
[00:21:18.420]people who walk into graduate programs."
[00:21:21.390]Because the doctoral program takes four to five years
[00:21:24.270]for most people, sometimes even more,
[00:21:27.390]you change throughout that process,
[00:21:29.310]so you will not be the same person as you entered.
[00:21:31.650]And that mentorship is also imagining potential futures
[00:21:37.020]and preparing for some of those potential futures
[00:21:39.690]that you slowly co-create and eventually get to a point
[00:21:43.410]where there's a mutual understanding of,
[00:21:45.217]"These are the things we're preparing you
[00:21:46.950]and that we think would be good for you,"
[00:21:49.080]and obviously you as a mentee are fully in and say,
[00:21:54.277]"This is what I want."
[00:21:55.830]And so that's really where that conversation
[00:22:01.110]keeps going back to, is can we start at different points
[00:22:05.400]and start seeing what are the paths
[00:22:07.500]and what are the doors that open because of graduate school,
[00:22:10.200]and mentorship is there
[00:22:11.340]because otherwise half of these things
[00:22:13.410]you don't know anymore.
[00:22:15.630]And I think it's important to, like I said before,
[00:22:19.050]think through not just a single mentor,
[00:22:21.870]but multiple perspectives around mentorship, right?
[00:22:25.890]Like I had the structural, I had the technical,
[00:22:27.930]and then I had kind of a pragmatic everyday kind of stuff.
[00:22:32.910]So it's very rare that you'll find
[00:22:36.360]someone who can do all of that in one package, right?
[00:22:41.670]Yeah. I think it's highly unlikely.
[00:22:46.200]And I think also you don't want that in many ways.
[00:22:49.763]I think you want multiple people.
[00:22:51.690]Mentorship is not a super Target,
[00:22:53.310]where you can pick up your food and your bins
[00:22:59.280]and then all this other extraneous stuff
[00:23:01.350]because that's what you do when you Target, right?
[00:23:03.810]It's more like Main Street
[00:23:05.610]where you've got specific shops for specific stuff,
[00:23:08.550]and that's okay.
[00:23:10.230]Yeah, and for me, for example, later in my career,
[00:23:12.990]so as a young faculty member,
[00:23:14.430]I had formal mentorship here at UNL,
[00:23:16.740]and then informal mentorship
[00:23:18.990]where I would check in with people.
[00:23:21.330]But on top of that, at one point or another,
[00:23:25.050]Freddie Hebert connected with me and Kathy Wilson
[00:23:28.260]and we did some work together,
[00:23:29.490]and that was really mentorship.
[00:23:31.410]She's, for example, the first person
[00:23:33.660]who really showed me how to craft a manuscript.
[00:23:36.300]So that happened after graduate school.
[00:23:38.730]After I was here,
[00:23:39.990]somebody finally showed me some moves in writing.
[00:23:42.990]Then I'm like, "Why didn't anybody
[00:23:45.540]tell me about this before?"
[00:23:47.820]Partially because Lee Swanson,
[00:23:50.790]who was my dissertation advisor,
[00:23:55.320]we wrote a few things together,
[00:23:56.820]but his writing was very technical.
[00:23:59.970]He did a lot of basic science.
[00:24:01.440]We wrote together, it's great, I love Lee,
[00:24:04.440]but it was not very transparent.
[00:24:06.600]I think we both struggled through it.
[00:24:09.390]But you succeeded!
[00:24:10.290]We both succeed.
[00:24:11.520]He succeeded beyond anything
[00:24:15.750]that I would probably ever do.
[00:24:18.990]So that's productive.
[00:24:20.700]But I collected, and throughout my life
[00:24:23.910]I've collected mentors.
[00:24:25.410]And what you have to remember, that every time you enter
[00:24:28.290]that relationship as a mentee, there's a power imbalance.
[00:24:31.860]You cannot expect, you are not at the same level.
[00:24:35.697]And that's fine,
[00:24:36.690]that's why you are entering that relationship.
[00:24:38.490]That person is helping apprentice you
[00:24:41.550]into a certain segment of what you wanna become.
[00:24:44.550]And that is productive for a while.
[00:24:47.310]And some relationships last, and some relationships stop.
[00:24:50.700]And that's fine.
[00:24:51.540]Also if you get, and I'm thinking about myself here,
[00:24:56.250]most of the people that mentored me early on, for example,
[00:24:59.520]have retired a long time ago.
[00:25:01.530]So it can't be an ongoing relationship.
[00:25:05.220]Or it just changes, like, "How do you retire?
[00:25:07.650]What does life look like after retirement?"
[00:25:09.720]Mentorship doesn't just stop, right?
[00:25:11.790]It just...
[00:25:12.623]Yes, it keeps evolving. Perhaps the structure
[00:25:15.000]changes, right?
[00:25:18.420]So if we're thinking about,
[00:25:19.410]this kind of makes me think about the role of
[00:25:22.230]having informal mentors, right?
[00:25:24.690]We've been talking a lot about advisors
[00:25:27.060]and really kind of official mentorship positions,
[00:25:30.780]but it's equally as important to have
[00:25:34.890]kind of these informal mentorship relationships.
[00:25:39.660]And so as you're thinking about your own career,
[00:25:44.940]how have you built up some of those informal mentorship
[00:25:51.000]kind of situations for yourself?
[00:25:52.860]And your example about writing a manuscript
[00:25:55.980]was perfect, right?
[00:25:57.090]This is something that you didn't learn
[00:25:59.490]in your grad program.
[00:26:01.830]Freddie stepped in and kind of gave you
[00:26:06.180]some insights around that,
[00:26:07.290]whether that was what her target was or not.
[00:26:12.960]I can't say what she was thinking at the time.
[00:26:15.540]It's hard to know what Freddie is thinking
[00:26:16.980]at any point in time, but!
[00:26:19.083]But, I would argue having watched her
[00:26:21.360]over the last probably 15, 16 years,
[00:26:25.680]I would argue that's what she does,
[00:26:27.330]is she finds younger faculty, wherever they may be,
[00:26:30.360]that she thinks have potential
[00:26:32.850]and can do some interesting work
[00:26:34.500]and encourages them and gives them some support
[00:26:37.080]and opportunity sometimes.
[00:26:38.880]And so there are people like that,
[00:26:41.790]who really think about mentorship
[00:26:45.060]as a major part of their contribution to the profession.
[00:26:48.390]And I think when I think about my own mentorship
[00:26:53.040]towards others, I think about it as my legacy.
[00:26:57.780]Because programs that we build will come and go
[00:27:01.320]and structures and ideas that you have
[00:27:05.220]or grants come and go, everything comes and goes,
[00:27:08.040]but if you mentor people
[00:27:10.320]that go into the profession and keep working,
[00:27:12.750]then you've got a number of people
[00:27:14.640]that you've contributed to that keep doing the work
[00:27:18.540]in different institutions.
[00:27:20.760]And by the way, I'm not just talking about academia.
[00:27:23.070]Even if they go and they manage a community college
[00:27:26.760]or they keep teaching 8th grade English, it does not matter.
[00:27:31.770]There's a piece of what we've developed together, really,
[00:27:36.060]what you've taught,
[00:27:36.893]but really what we've developed together that keeps going.
[00:27:39.030]And that's for me the the enduring legacy.
[00:27:42.780]And so that helps me let go of things that stop, right?
[00:27:47.940]That you build and you put your everything into,
[00:27:51.690]but mentorship is one of those things.
[00:27:53.460]And I keep in touch with most of my mentees,
[00:27:57.051]even after graduate school.
[00:27:58.620]This is why he sends 2,000 emails a week.
[00:28:01.408](Guy laughing)
[00:28:03.330]But we keep in touch, we keep meeting,
[00:28:05.280]and that's an opportunity to grow.
[00:28:07.200]Also, I'll be honest, partially it is,
[00:28:09.600]especially because those who are become faculty members
[00:28:13.080]sometimes end up in institutions
[00:28:14.580]that don't have formal mentorship
[00:28:16.620]or even informal mentorship.
[00:28:18.810]And so they're a little bit lost
[00:28:21.210]and you still want everybody to be successful
[00:28:23.160]even though it's not the job anymore,
[00:28:25.890]but it is because, again, going back to legacy,
[00:28:29.070]if somebody can be successful, get to tenure,
[00:28:31.440]and keep producing interesting work,
[00:28:34.680]then we've all won I think.
[00:28:38.160]I'll sign onto that.
[00:28:40.350]But back to how do you get informal mentors,
[00:28:43.020]some people will approach you.
[00:28:45.540]Inside your institutions, get to know people.
[00:28:47.490]I just land, I always did this,
[00:28:49.860]I landed in people's offices.
[00:28:51.300]If there was somebody that I saw somewhere
[00:28:53.250]and was interesting, sometimes I would send in an email,
[00:28:56.910]but if they were in their office,
[00:28:58.110]I would just knock on the door
[00:28:59.400]and go and have a conversation.
[00:29:01.140]And sometimes it developed into something
[00:29:03.000]and sometimes it was just a conversation.
[00:29:05.340]And so I learned to be social and to really rely on that-
[00:29:10.830]Wait.
[00:29:11.760]I learned to be social.
[00:29:12.839]There was a time where you weren't social?
[00:29:14.250]Yes, very much so.
[00:29:15.660]Is there a video? I'm actually-
[00:29:17.795]Yes, probably.
[00:29:20.573]Who has this, 'cause I need to find it?
[00:29:23.118]So just full disclosure, I'm actually fairly shy.
[00:29:29.520]We've had this conversation before.
[00:29:30.980]I am fairly shy. I know, and I still think
[00:29:32.100]you're lying to me.
[00:29:34.260]These conversations are hard.
[00:29:35.940]Another place to have a lot of good conversations
[00:29:38.910]and potentially pick mentors is when you go to conferences,
[00:29:41.940]but that means you gotta go and be social.
[00:29:44.190]Go to dinners.
[00:29:45.090]You don't need those big meetings.
[00:29:47.670]The big receptions are often not a very good place
[00:29:51.720]because it's noisy.
[00:29:52.830]Especially for me, the combination of evening,
[00:29:56.160]potentially one drink, and the noise level
[00:29:59.130]in one of these ballrooms
[00:30:00.600]does not really create a good conversation of any kind
[00:30:04.560]except about the weather or something like that,
[00:30:06.840]or the pate or whatever's going on there.
[00:30:09.570]The pate.
[00:30:10.522]Pate,
[00:30:11.550]I don't know what they...
[00:30:12.600]What do they serve?
[00:30:14.070]I try to stay away.
[00:30:15.090]I don't know, I've never been to one that has pate though.
[00:30:16.950]I wanna go to that SIG.
[00:30:18.570]All right.
[00:30:19.950]They've got money. But go to, for example,
[00:30:22.110]ARA, the example of the smaller groups.
[00:30:24.390]So the SIGs, the places where you're gonna find
[00:30:28.080]15 to 20 people, those are the places you wanna be
[00:30:31.200]because then you can have conversations
[00:30:32.850]and once in a while there might be a relationship
[00:30:35.580]that can develop a little bit further.
[00:30:38.130]The other side of this, and I do wanna say this
[00:30:40.710]because that's important to say,
[00:30:41.820]on the formal side, many universities,
[00:30:43.920]many more universities, ours definitely
[00:30:46.200]have formal mentorship structures beyond your advisor.
[00:30:50.850]So we have a program where you can have a mentor
[00:30:53.700]from another university, and that is really powerful
[00:30:58.140]because you're networking,
[00:30:59.310]because you're getting totally different input
[00:31:01.140]than the thing you can get just from the people you know
[00:31:03.750]right around here,
[00:31:04.890]and that's a whole new level of mentorship.
[00:31:08.490]And if there is an opportunity like that in an institution,
[00:31:11.490]you should always grab it
[00:31:13.380]because it's supported, it's formalized,
[00:31:16.800]so there are points of contact,
[00:31:18.480]then especially if you are more shy,
[00:31:21.150]that's an opportunity to have that relationship.
[00:31:23.880]And that was my discovery after I graduated,
[00:31:27.720]is I need to do a much better job finding people
[00:31:33.240]and having these conversations.
[00:31:34.830]And I've developed those skills.
[00:31:36.150]And especially if English is not your first language,
[00:31:38.220]that's always a little bit harder.
[00:31:40.740]I think it's easier now, but it's still,
[00:31:43.500]there are still difficult moments in that space.
[00:31:48.300]Did I ever tell you about my conference game?
[00:31:50.190]Or I shouldn't say my conference game?
[00:31:51.630]I didn't own it.
[00:31:52.980]Yeah? But it was a conference game
[00:31:54.390]that we played, my academic siblings and I
[00:31:56.520]played in grad school,
[00:31:57.780]where when we would go to a conference,
[00:32:02.790]we had to talk to three new people.
[00:32:05.370]Oh, wow.
[00:32:06.690]For at least 10 minutes.
[00:32:11.040]And there was no prize,
[00:32:12.480]but there was something about being the first one done,
[00:32:15.210]which was never me.
[00:32:17.940]Ever. I never won that symbolic prize.
[00:32:21.990]But it forced me, who is a bit more of an introvert.
[00:32:28.620]I was built for this pandemic.
[00:32:30.600]I was built to stay home
[00:32:34.350]and live unto my own little world.
[00:32:37.500]But it really forced me to go out there and be like,
[00:32:40.027]"Hey, who are you? What do you do?
[00:32:44.040]Let's talk."
[00:32:45.810]And actually some really interesting mentorship
[00:32:49.140]came out of those conversations,
[00:32:51.360]because I met not only other faculty,
[00:32:54.900]but other grad students
[00:32:56.940]who were being trained differently than I was.
[00:33:01.530]And so we were able to compare notes,
[00:33:03.210]and that in and of itself became kind of like this,
[00:33:07.967]I don't know if it was necessarily mentorship,
[00:33:09.600]but there was definitely a lot of learning
[00:33:11.310]about how to be in this academic space.
[00:33:15.750]Whereas there were other more formal mentorships
[00:33:18.510]that came out of those conversations as well
[00:33:21.660]around just how to do this work.
[00:33:26.430]Yeah, and for me as a mentor now,
[00:33:30.150]there's specific work I do at conferences,
[00:33:32.970]and that is I meet with any of my students
[00:33:35.880]or anybody actually from our program
[00:33:37.650]that's at the conference,
[00:33:39.330]or at least keep an invitation open.
[00:33:41.910]Either breakfast or a coffee
[00:33:43.470]or something at least once a day just to debrief
[00:33:46.050]about what did you find and give recommendations
[00:33:49.950]and opportunities.
[00:33:51.300]And often what happens in that space is people come by
[00:33:54.840]that know me or know somebody else there,
[00:33:57.210]and so there's introductions all around that again,
[00:33:59.880]creates that familiarity effect.
[00:34:02.730]Where the first time you see that person,
[00:34:04.800]you just kind of wave and they see your face.
[00:34:06.810]By the third time, there's a conversation
[00:34:10.260]and there's potentially an opportunity
[00:34:12.480]or they tell you about their presentation and you hop by,
[00:34:16.200]and suddenly it's a second time they've seen you
[00:34:18.390]and you have a conversation right after the presentation.
[00:34:20.310]I mean, there's lots of ways to construct that.
[00:34:22.410]And so from a mentorship perspective, if you are the mentor,
[00:34:25.170]there are lots of opportunities in that space
[00:34:28.710]to support students and to give them that jumping off point,
[00:34:31.470]whether it's...
[00:34:33.060]The three person game,
[00:34:34.020]I like that competition. Yeah, it was fun.
[00:34:36.900]Also, so Karen was also really good at
[00:34:39.600]introducing grad students to, "Okay, Jennifer Rozel."
[00:34:46.080]Or Jim Ger.
[00:34:51.630]Toning down of the research superstars.
[00:34:57.720]Newsflash, they're just like you.
[00:35:00.960]So toning that down and being able to have conversations
[00:35:05.190]and be like, "Hey Jennifer, how are you?
[00:35:09.240]How is England?"
[00:35:11.010]And being able to have those conversations
[00:35:12.870]and the insights into, what does her career look like now?
[00:35:16.770]What should I be looking toward in the future?
[00:35:19.110]Et cetera, et cetera.
[00:35:19.943]So thinking about mentorship
[00:35:24.180]is also helping students create these social networks,
[00:35:27.540]your grad students create these social networks,
[00:35:28.860]I think it's really important,
[00:35:30.120]and I really benefited from that as a doc student.
[00:35:35.460]All right, so today we talked about mentorship.
[00:35:37.860]We talked about mentorship.
[00:35:39.270]So two pieces of advice for mentorship.
[00:35:42.330]For? Graduate students.
[00:35:43.560]For graduate students. Okay.
[00:35:44.940]So...
[00:35:50.580]Be clear about what you need.
[00:35:52.950]And by that I mean sometimes you're not gonna know
[00:35:55.680]exactly what you need,
[00:35:56.513]but you're gonna know the space around it.
[00:35:57.840]You're gonna know the edges of what you know.
[00:36:00.300]And a good mentor should be able to help you
[00:36:02.760]fill in that hole and think about
[00:36:04.830]how to actually address that hole.
[00:36:06.780]Also, don't be afraid to ask for that mentorship.
[00:36:14.250]Ask for specific things.
[00:36:18.840]And a good mentor will help you through those things,
[00:36:24.420]help you determine whether or not they're as important.
[00:36:26.760]Certain things that I thought was super important
[00:36:28.440]weren't actually that important,
[00:36:31.350]but they'll guide you into other things
[00:36:33.660]that are more important.
[00:36:34.493]What are your two?
[00:36:35.370]My two are, first of all, you don't need just one mentor,
[00:36:39.810]you need a few mentors.
[00:36:41.880]One may be formal,
[00:36:43.050]but you need to seek those informal opportunities
[00:36:45.480]and grow that network of mentors
[00:36:47.640]that can teach you different things.
[00:36:49.440]And the second thing is, if it really isn't working,
[00:36:53.400]you should probably start looking at other options
[00:36:56.820]to make sure that you are getting what you need.
[00:36:58.653]Then you can be successful.
[00:37:00.420]Ooh, can I add a 0.5?
[00:37:01.645]Yes, 0.5. 2.5. 2.5 tips.
[00:37:04.350]So to piggyback off that last one,
[00:37:06.900]be okay with some level of discomfort.
[00:37:08.850]Yeah.
[00:37:10.230]Growth is hard.
[00:37:11.550]Learning is tricky.
[00:37:12.900]It's not easy.
[00:37:13.800]If it's easy, we're not doing it right.
[00:37:17.100]Yeah. Absolutely.
[00:37:18.480]There's always tension, I agree.
[00:37:20.430]So and being okay with that tension
[00:37:24.600]around what's being asked of you
[00:37:26.460]and understanding that your mentor's gonna be
[00:37:29.790]asking things of you wherein you might fail.
[00:37:34.080]Absolutely. But that's kind of built in.
[00:37:36.686]That's learning, right? That's learning
[00:37:38.907]and that's how you discover where your strengths are
[00:37:41.371]and what are the things you need to grow in
[00:37:43.740]and what direction do you wanna take.
[00:37:46.140]And your mentor also doesn't know
[00:37:48.540]exactly where your strengths are.
[00:37:50.100]There's no magic way to look at a person and say,
[00:37:52.267]"Oh, I know exactly what you need."
[00:37:55.170]Because we really don't, especially early on.
[00:37:57.480]Alexa can't do that yet?
[00:37:58.560]There's no app for that yet?
[00:38:00.390]There should...
[00:38:01.223]$1 million idea, design an app that does just that.
[00:38:05.460]Find Your Strengths 2.0!
[00:38:07.210]Isn't that a book? That's a book.
[00:38:08.758]I feel like that's a book.
[00:38:09.750]Probably.
[00:38:11.040]There's so many strength finders.
[00:38:13.680]I don't think it helps you in graduate school.
[00:38:15.870]Yeah, I think I got that book on a second date once,
[00:38:18.420]and I'm trying to figure out why
[00:38:20.760]now that I'm thinking about it, but yes!
[00:38:22.350]Okay. Mentorship.
[00:38:23.280]That's neither here nor there.
[00:38:24.240]Mentorship, we've talked informal, we've talked formal.
[00:38:28.560]Find them, they're important.
[00:38:29.928]All right.
[00:38:31.112](upbeat groovy music)

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Not That Kind of Doctor - Mentorship

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