How to Use this Blog to Self-Mentor

So you’d like to mentor yourself?  Maybe you don’t want a mentor, or you are waiting for APSA to match you with a mentor, or you have a mentor but are looking for additional resources.  Fabulous.  Here’s how to use this blog to mentor yourself:

 

Mentoring is about addressing three kinds of needs that we all have in periods of career transition.  Identify a specific need that you are looking to address, and then scan over to the right of this screen to the list of Posts by Topic.  Each post is tagged with labels to help you quickly identify posts that will be most useful to you, given your needs.

So what are these three kinds of needs?

Mentee Need #1:  Addressing Practical Concerns

This is probably what most people think of when they think of mentoring.  Practical concerns might include:

• The job market:  writing cover letters, doing interviews, organizing a CV, the ethics of going on the market while already employed
• Publications:  where to submit articles, how to respond to readers’ reports, how to write a book prospectus
• Time management:  how to make research progress while teaching full-time, how to make the most of research leave
• Teaching:  how to deal with problems in the classroom, how to design a syllabus, how to improve teaching skills
• Tenure:  how to put together tenure file materials, how to strategize publications for tenure

If you have a practical concern, look for a tag at the right with a related title.  If you don’t see a tag with the topic you want support with, then email me or leave a comment to let me know.  Since this blog is relatively new, there will be a lot of topics that do not have any related posts just yet.  But I will get there over time – and your gentle nudge will let me know where there is most need.

 

Mentee Need #2:  Developing a Broader Network

A lot of people will likely not identify this as one of their needs at first, but this is absolutely crucial to a successful career, happiness in life, and world peace.  Plus, this is a way to find people who can mentor you!    

For this need, I’ve got a few important posts already up and running for you.  Just click on “networking” over on the right.

 

Mentee Need #3:  Transitioning to a New Career Stage

This is the need, I believe, that is the most difficult to meet when we are doing it all by ourselves.  So, while I want to set up resources for you to self-mentor using this blog, I also want to encourage you to still find yourself a flesh and blood mentor (or two or three).

The kind of things I am thinking of here have to do with a transition in one’s identity.  For one person, this may entail work on developing the self-confidence needed to fully embody a new role as a Ph.D., as a professor, or as an expert in a particular area of scholarship.  For another person, this might involve concerns about the relationship between personal and professional lives:  new career stages often involve moving away (literally and figuratively) from loved ones, or dealing with new relationship/family/career stresses, or the loneliness of a new institution and a new city.

I do not yet have any resources up about how to work on transitions, but I intend to develop these (and then label them “transitions” for you over on the right).

 

 

 

Alright, get to it!  Mentor yourself!