This is a great article by Naledi Saul, Director, Office of Career & Professional Development. Student Academic Affairs.
Published in Synapse, the UCSF student newspaper.
The first thing you should know is that you don’t need a mentor – you need five of them. It’s almost impossible for students to find in a single person the full range of academic and professional mentorship that they typically need. Instead, students do well when they find multiple mentors who embody different aspects of the five types of support that define well-rounded mentorship. Here’s what you need:
1. A field mentor: someone who knows your area of work
This mentor is a content expert who helps you learn the information and skills required to develop as a clinician or researcher in your field of study. The biggest mistake students make in choosing a field mentor is picking someone who is well regarded, but unavailable. So if you have a big-name but too-busy mentor, consider rounding them out with a second, more accessible field mentor.
These can be people just a few years ahead of you in their own training. For example, if you’re in the lab, your mentor could be the postdoc who gives great feedback when you get stuck. Or, if you’re a medical student, ask 4th years about the best study resource for your shelf exam. Mentors are defined not by their seniority, but by their willingness to give you their time, attention and advice to help you achieve your personal and professional goals.
Often, field mentorships have short life spans. Your relationship might be a micro-mentorship of a few weeks, limited to the length of a particular project, clinical preceptorship or work experience.
2. A career mentor: someone who knows your career path
This mentor offers guidance on how to position yourself to pursue a particular career path. In a perfect world, your field mentor and career mentor would be the same person. But unless you’ve chosen the same career path as your field mentor, they probably won’t have the background or knowledge required to offer you sufficient direction, opportunities and contacts.
Read the full article at:
