are you my mentor?

[Note:  This is a post for mentees.  The companion post for mentors is here

So you are an early career political theorist looking for a mentor.  You might be a graduate student, a recent Ph.D. adjuncting or on a post-doc, or perhaps a junior faculty member on a tenure track.  You might be one of the lucky few at an institution with a formal program to match you up with a mentor.  Or perhaps you signed up for a mentor through APSA. 

You've been matched with a potential mentor.  Now what?


Don't rush into it.  Stop and assess whether you and your potential mentor are a good fit for one another.

You wouldn't marry the first person eharmony matched you up with, sight unseen, would you?  So don't rush into this, either.  Take the time to figure out if you and your potential mentor really do make a good match.


First, be clear with yourself about why you want a mentor.  Your reasons may include the following:

• you might have specific professionalization questions that you would like help with:  going on the job market, getting a book published, planning a publication schedule for tenure, teaching large lecture courses, etc.
• you might want to expand your network to include someone senior outside your department or institution, someone who isn't a dissertation advisor
• you might want advice and support around a career transition:  being a professor rather than a student, becoming a senior scholar, having children, dealing with two careers in the same family, and so on.  I would include in this category wanting a mentor who matches with one's own demographics in terms of qualities like race, sexuality, family, and gender.

Then, have a conversation with your potential mentor to assess your fit - by phone, by email, or in person at a conference.  You can always decide that you are not a good fit.  It's much better to determine that early on than to try to soldier through with a bad match.

Some questions you might ask your potential mentor to help determine whether you are a good fit:

• What has your experience with mentorship been?  Have you had mentors?  What were they like?
• Why are you interested in mentoring?
• What kind of time do you expect to give to mentoring?  (If you are looking for a mentor who is willing to read drafts of your work, for example, you will want to be very specific about that up front.)
• If I asked you for advice about something, and you didn't feel like you could help me, what would you do?

Remember:  your mentor does not need to be perfect in every way.  You can have many mentors, and chances are you already do have some mentors, even if you do not realize that's what they are.  So don't hold the bar ridiculously high. 


Let me know how this works out for you, and please email or post comments with any questions you have!