EFFECTIVE MENTORING: Reap the
Rewards Without Getting Bogged Down
in a One-Sided Lab Mentorship
Although I wouldn’t know firsthand, I can imagine that receiving an undergraduate or high school lab mentee is
much like bringing a newborn baby home from the hospital.
In analogous cases, both the technically skilled yet untrained
graduate or postdoc supervisor and the loving but inexperi-
enced parents find themselves struggling to adapt to a fresh
role, where their success is gauged by the amount of care they
instill into their new, young being. In much the same way that
parents safeguard their baby from physical harm, graduate
mentors are responsible for educating their students about lab
safety. While parents impart a sense of security by shelter-
ing their infant from frightening television shows and austere
news headlines, graduate students must remain kind and
encouraging in the face of harsh referee reports and corrupt
academic politics. It is the parents’ obligation to decrypt and
attend to their newborn’s cries; in a similar manner, gradu-
ate mentors should be empathetic of their mentee’s struggles,
be they finals, roommate issues, or whatever else. Babies are
unaccustomed to managing their hunger pains, and under-
graduates simply lack the experience to be competent at man-
aging their time. Caring for a newborn seems like a full-time,
all-encompassing endeavor; is mentoring an undergraduate
as well? To simply put it, no. That would make for a dread-
ful graduate school experience. For a mentorship that will
likely last a maximum of two years, graduate and postdoctoral
supervisors need to brush up on their managerial skills to
reap the benefits of this mutually didactic collaboration. How?
Keep on reading.
It’s 9:00 a.m. on a Monday morning, and in your typi-
cal overly ambitious way, you’re the first one in lab. Your PI
comes sauntering in with an undergraduate you TA-ed last
semester. Your mind flashes back to this student’s excessive
e-mails, uncouth grade-grubbing manner, and superfluous
questioning during lecture. “Oh no!” you think, “they’d bet-
ter not join my lab!” You try to make a run for it, anticipat-
ing the upsetting conversation and burdensome mentorship
that would soon ensue, but your PI’s eyes lock onto yours and
there’s no escape. Fifteen minutes and a panic attack later, you
have a new, bright-eyed undergraduate to oversee. The project
is exciting (high risk, high reward—the student has nothing
Marisa Sanders is a member of the ACS the Graduate Education Advisory
Board and Younger Chemists Committee
Mr a s a m r of h h a uat Ed tion i
B ardand You ge C e o tt e
