Isis Lesson #37: No one individual can provide you all of the mentoring that you need to be successful.
The scientific world is a bit of a strange place. When we are trainees, we enter into relationships with people who serve as our advisors and frequently we expect that they will solely mentor us to success. The reality is that sometimes we need things that these advisors are either incapable or unwilling of providing for us. It seems like a simple lesson, but it is a lesson that I spent years beating my head against the wall, stomping me feet, and crying in order to learn. The mentor who serves as our academic advisor can really only teach us to be them, because those are the experiences they've had. We are each a reflection of the experiences we've had and the people who have taught us. At the end of the day I had to realize that, as much as I wanted it, there were things that the men I have been mentored by could not provide for me and to continue to demand it only made us both uncomfortable. The establishment of a diverse network of advocates and mentors has been and will be crucial to my success.
That said, what kind of mentors does a scientist need to be successful?
I had a very interesting conversation recently with a group of other women scientists about the value of having a mentor who "looks like you" if you are a woman, minority, or (God forbid) a minority woman in science. Initially many of the discussants commented that they had received quality mentoring from white men in their field and that one should not turn down a mentor because of his white d00dliness. Before some of you lose you junk in my comments section, I think that sounds very reasonable. However, as the conversation progressed, several women remarked that they also see value in having someone "like them" to discuss the cultural aspects of academia with, someone to ask if they are interpreting a situation correctly, and someone to come to with issues unique to being a woman/minority/minority woman.
I have had several valuable white d00d mentors, two of whom I spent yesterday with, learning to make beer and wine, grunting, playing music, and generally making fun of their d00dliness. Central to our relationship is a level of trust and a sincere belief that they tell me things because they have my best interests in mind. Neither of them are scientists -- one is a Catholic deacon and the other is the editor of a major publication. Even though they are not in my field, they both still have had experiences that I can learn from and I have frequently called upon them for help. What I value the most about our relationship is that they are willing to have a good, solid scrap without taking it to heart. They also have the perspective to grab me by my shoulders, give me a shake, and say, "Isis, what the fuck are you doing?" when I need it (as I did this trip). They offer me glimpses into their culture, one that I am unfamiliar with, and have frequently helped me frame my behavior in order to pass in academia.
But, I also frequently find myself feeling isolated in the sea of white d00dliness and having contacts who "look like me" to help me navigate the culture may be really important too. There are differences in how cultures communicate and what the norms are for discourse. Frequently minorities are brought in to help "diversity," but most of us appreciate that this is not really the intent. Minorities are brought in to make the culture look diverse, but are usually expected to blend into the dominant culture. That assimilation process can be awkward and painful.
On Friday night I had dinner with a group of women scientists I recently met who were more like me than my white male colleagues, speak the same languages I do, and had families with the same educational background I do. That experience was tremendously valuable. While I appreciate that there is no rule that says that the best mentor for a woman is a woman, or a brown person for a brown person, or a brown woman for a brown woman, and I have great relationships with white men, this new network is also incredibly important.
So where does this post go from here?
Balls if I know, but I suppose it's fodder for future blog posts.
How do we establish these networks? Certainly every woman/minority/minority woman can't be expected to mentor every person like them who is coming up in the ranks, but I fear that we fail to establish these networks at our peril.
I'm going to go eat some tacos and ponder this some more...
Education
Humanities & Social Science
Comments
The problem with getting into academia through a non-traditional route is that, while there are mentors who look like me, none of them have acted like me. Some of the women I met when checking out grad schools who looked very much like me were completely opposed to my philosophy of life. Surprisingly, I've gotten the most emotional and cultural support from men, some of whom look nothing like me at all.
Posted by: UnlikelyGrad | October 4, 2009 3:27 PM
Word. I had many great male mentors, but the value of seeing women all around me combine motherhood and a career in academia is incalculable.
Posted by: perceval | October 4, 2009 3:48 PM
The converse is true for the white d00d grad students, they benefit from having mentors that don't look like them. Otherwise we'll just end up with another generation of white dudes who think scientist are white dudes.
Posted by: SouthernFriedScientist | October 4, 2009 4:24 PM
I have mentor is who does not much look like me. He is a near retirement age, white man. I adore him, and he has been a huge supporter of mine. However. He has a wife who takes care of the necessities of life.
One night while I was at his house and his wife was out picking up some take-and-bake pizzas, I had to help him turn on the oven in anticipation of the arrival of the pizzas. He had simply never done it. Likewise, he does not do laundry, does not put gas in the car, does not prepare or shop for food.
As I say, he is a wonderful man. But, he simply has no experience from which to offer advice on maintaining a research career, raising a toddler and simultaneously remembering to buy milk.
Luckily I have other mentors who are useful for that. Including Isis upon whom I rely for wisdom and humour. I find my mentors most useful to me when I do not expect them to be all things to me.
Posted by: PostDoc | October 4, 2009 4:24 PM
agreed, both Isis and Unlikely Grad. No one mentor is going to fit all bills and any given one may not be so good for what one might assume, based on just lookin'
the key is to, without prior assumption, figure out what a given mentor IS giving you and appreciate that.
Posted by: bikemonkey | October 4, 2009 4:34 PM
Since the recognition of mentoring's importance, institutions have thought that they could assign new faculty a mentor and everything would end well.
This is a pipe dream. You have to have multiple mentors who bring different things to you (cause no one person can do it all). The most valuable mentors are those you find yourself. That means networking and getting out there, no matter how difficult you find those activities.
Most of my mentors were white men with stay-at-home spouses who really didn't get my life (and most freely admitted it). No one mentor has followed my path, but through them all, at one time or another, I have found what I needed.
Posted by: Pascale | October 4, 2009 5:02 PM
In my career mentoring of my trainees I always urge them to seek advice and input from as many people as possible, and I assure them that I would not take it as an insult. I also try to be as explicit as possible about my own career history and perspectives and how that shapes my opinions.
Posted by: Comrade PhysioProf | October 4, 2009 5:33 PM
reading this makes me realize that i had the best phd mentor i could have ever imagined to ask for. i totally took this for granted.
i now have two bosses as a postdoc, one that looks like me and one that doesn't. funny thing is, my attitude has fit better in the lab run by the person who doesn't look like me.
i suspect this is because of the whole cultural adaptation thing. my phd mentor adapted to fit in the majority-dominated culture, which was probably what one needed to do at the time. i learned phd mentor's way of doing things, which are apparently distinct. but now, the boss who looks like me is from another generation, and holy fucking shit are things different. i am honestly not adjusting to it so well.
how about that?
Posted by: leigh | October 4, 2009 5:47 PM
I thought Abbie was the hottest female scientist on SciBlogs. I wonder who gets the "Hottest male scientist on Sciblogs". Ethan? Orac? Definitely not Ed, Greg or PZ.
--
Martin
Posted by: MartinDH | October 4, 2009 5:52 PM
Yes to everyone so far - you are all very thoughtful and reflective and it will help you understand the 'less experienced' people you will mentor during your career.
I have worked, since grade 10, with various groups - sometimes mostly men, sometimes mostly women, always with some diversity in cultural groups. Very rarely in life do I find anyone who thought like me - it got better when I went to another state for University (which was not a usual thing to do in my country, for people my age). Even then, most of my friends came from a range of different backgrounds, not many like mine.
As well as realising that mentors are useful, you need to realise that you are a 'loner' most of the time, and to evaluate the advice and mentoring you get, and reflect on how you can use it in your own situation - or not (as everyone contributing to this post does).
Sometimes, you just have to sigh and realise that you feel like you come from another planet. It may be hard, but it just IS. But that it is a Good Thing, because (as one correspondent has written), we don't all want to become like the standard 'norm', society would not progress that way.
d.
Posted by: d. | October 4, 2009 6:01 PM
You have to have multiple mentors who bring different things to you (cause no one person can do it all). The most valuable mentors are those you find yourself. That means networking and getting out there, no matter how difficult you find those activities.
Yes!! Exactly!!
And I think we should never be so rigid as to assume that mentors must be in our chosen field. We can learn things from people in completely different careers.
I learned how to juggle family life with going to school from a woman who was wrapping up nursing school about the time I was considering grad school applications. I got lessons in how to "sell myself" from a successful entrepreneur I worked with in a volunteer position. I learned how to organize a big project from a friend who's a caterer. I consider all of these (and more) to be my mentors.
I guess it's a little trite to say you can learn something from everyone. (Some people I know...well, let's just say you don't want to hang around them long enough to learn anything, good or bad.) But in theory, it's true.
Posted by: UnlikelyGrad | October 4, 2009 6:04 PM
Yes to UnlikelyGrad at #11.
One time, when working with mostly men, I found inspiration and clues on how to cope with personal life events when I became friendly with the cleaners, both of whom were relatively uneducated women.
d.
Posted by: d. | October 4, 2009 6:29 PM
My PhD mentor Looked Like Me and she was absolutely wonderful--totally invested in my success as a scientist, nurturing but full of tough love, and committed to the idea of me *owning* my research. As a post-doc, I've spent the last several years collaborating with three of the whitest White Dude mentors there are, and am thriving in this setting too, I think at least in part because of how I was trained. I'm not sure if things would have gone as well, though, if the order of the mentors had been reversed.
So yes, you can benefit from all types of mentors, but I think it's useful to be a little lucky with respect to *when* you encounter each one.
Posted by: Becca | October 4, 2009 6:43 PM
My PhD mentor looks like me, and it's been invaluable to watch her navigate various professional channels successfully and to model myself after her. But I think that the idea of having multiple mentors is key, and the sooner you start finding people who look like you, who don't look like you, who look like you and deal with it in the same way that your advisor does, who look like you but deal with it totally differently than your advisor does, the sooner you can make out a whole range of acceptable behaviors and ways of dealing. As much as I appreciate having an awesome advisor -- and I really, really do -- having a whole network of people I can turn to is reassuring and helpful.
Posted by: Bookbag | October 4, 2009 7:00 PM
"Being, basically, the hottest female scientist at ScienceBlogs is not easy..."
How do you know how hard Abbie Smith's life is?
Posted by: Tyler DiPietro | October 4, 2009 7:17 PM
My PhD mentor was a white dude, and was a GREAT advisor. Always looking out for my best interests, introducing me to people in the field, etc. My postdoc mentor was a woman, who ostensibly "looked like me". She turned out to be a terrible mentor, and all I learned from her was how not to treat people who work for you (albeit a good lesson). So having a mentor of the same gender/race isn't a sure thing.
@Postdoc who said, "I find my mentors most useful to me when I do not expect them to be all things to me", you've got it right. That can be said of pretty much everyone in your life.
Posted by: Betsy | October 4, 2009 7:24 PM
I'm a physicist and the only time I've ever had a female professor/advisor was as an undergrad. I was a junior when I had my first (of only two) classes with her. Prior to that class I had never been made to feel unwelcome or inadequate by any of my male teachers/professors, but I do remember how nice it felt to have a female professor. Not because she gave the women in the class any preference, or because she was somehow nicer than other teachers I'd had in the past. It was just this subconscious feeling. Maybe it helped me realize that I could belong. Getting more women into science, especially physics and engineering is a big deal right now. And it's hard. How do you get more women in these fields? In my opinion, by getting more women into these fields.
Posted by: Interdisciplinary Introspective | October 4, 2009 9:36 PM
Dude. People sure do love to troll you.
OT: I agree with UnlikelyGrad that non-traditional studenthood adds another dimension to one's search (or wistful casting about) for role models and figures of inspiration. At this point, I hope to finish my PhD by my mid-thirties. (And this might actually happen, too! Stay tuned.) Did all the rest of you become PIs by the age I am now? Good grief. I feel even more behind than I already did! :)
I also agree that one should look for multiple mentors to satisfy one's diverse array of needs in this department. . . Honestly, though, I thought that was a given when I first read this post a few hours ago. What thoughtful person looks for one mentor to be all things to her?
I think an important point is that it is easy for a minority to internalize messages about a group to which she belongs that are transmitted by the majority around her. Naturally, not every brown person or woman has the same experiences, and it's not important to every brown person or woman to have any role models that "look like them". However, for some of us, even small measures help. Just yesterday, I was re-reading your and DM's contributions to the Diversity in Science Carnival. Becoming a scientist is at the forefront of my brain. These contributions have been particularly encouraging to me as of late.
Posted by: Juniper Shoemaker | October 5, 2009 12:04 AM
Hey guys, you know what would be really awesome? If we find more posts about the difficulty of being a woman in science and then get into fights about which babes are totally hotter than others! Can we have sword fights after? High fives all around!
Posted by: Dennis | October 5, 2009 1:26 AM
I think this is exactly the point. Sometimes having a frame of reference can be important. That doesn't mean that everyone will need it all the time, or that everyone will be able to offer it, but I sometimes wonder what the "isolation effect" does to minority groups who try to enter science....
Posted by: Isis the Scientist | October 5, 2009 7:16 AM
Juniper, I empathize. I will be past 40 when I finish my Ph.D. and I've met several profs who are younger than I am. My temporary advisor (still trying to find a permanent one) may have two or three years on me, but surely not much more than that...all of my kids are older than hers. *sigh* I do like her though, and am already learning a lot from her.
Posted by: UnlikelyGrad | October 5, 2009 10:18 AM