Regardless of your career stage, you need mentorship. Every scientist and professional benefits from having someone to show them the ropes—the catch is that some mentors are more skilled at giving thoughtful guidance than others.
As an undergraduate, graduate, or postdoctoral trainee, your primary mentor will be your research advisor or principal investigator (PI). However, it’s not a bad idea to find an additional mentor beyond your PI, especially if your current advisor isn’t up to the task.
First things first: It is not your job to make sure that your advisor is a good mentor. That’s your advisor’s job and the job of whoever provides them with money or resources. But science—like other workplaces—has some folks who are inexperienced and even damaging bosses. It can help to know what to look out for so that you can protect yourself and get the mentorship you deserve. Here’s what you can reasonably expect.
Scientific mentors, like most bosses out there, are busy people. In addition, research advisors have the added stress of being (in most cases) directly and solely responsible for funding their labs and guiding the overall progress of the lab. It’s a job that requires a lot of skills—basically akin running a small company—and one that we don’t train folks enough for.
Still, if you’re doing work for someone, there is a minimal amount of guidance you can expect from them. Keeping in mind that mentors are people too, and that life (and funding) can bring its ups and downs, here’s what I would consider reasonable expectations for mentors:
■ Responses to emails within two to three days, perhaps slightly longer when they’re up against grant deadlines. If it’s going to be much longer, communicative advisors will at least acknowledge they’ve received your email and let you know when to expect a response.
■ Weekly to monthly thirty-minute one-on-one meetings (or comprehensive virtual communication) with your mentor to update your progress. More frequently than weekly doesn’t make sense for most types of research, and less than monthly is likely too infrequent, unless you’re entirely independent.
■ Clear communication about the next steps in a project. In other words, you understand what your mentor expects you to be working on. Ideally, there is also clear communication about your short- and long-term goals in the lab.
It deeply frustrates me that I need to include this next passage, but alas, here we go.
■ Mentors should respect your physical and emotional boundaries. If your mentor makes unwanted physical contact, it is not okay under any circumstances. Similarly, if your mentor is placing you in dire and/or inappropriate emotional situations (e.g., putting the entirety of the lab’s success on your shoulders), that’s also not okay.
■ Mentors should treat you like an adult that they respect. Under no circumstances do you deserve to be yelled at or ridiculed by your mentor. In addition, if you are in a program with certain guidelines (e.g., the work required to graduate, or time to graduation), your mentor should respect those guidelines.
■ Mentors should not threaten your personal or professional life. Even if your project is failing, and your data is crap, your mentor still has a responsibility to be a reasonable person. And reasonable people don’t abuse their power over others.
If any of the above happen to you, please contact your program advisor, campus office, human resources, or someone that you trust. It can be tricky to deal with uncomfortable situations given the apparent power that many mentors have over their trainees. However, there are ways out, and you do not need to put up with bad mentorship to become a successful scientist.
Thankfully, most folks recognize that the behaviors above are unacceptable. Still, there are a few other hazier areas that are worth looking out for.
■ Mentors should be up-front about their ability to fund you. It is not okay for a mentor to take on a trainee without a plan to pay them accordingly. Sometimes grants fall through or financial situations change—that’s to be expected. But as a trainee (and really, an employee), you should be informed about what’s going on.
■ Mentors should provide both critical and positive feedback. We tend to be rather skeptical in science—we dismantle journal articles, criticize our own data—it’s an intrinsic part of the gig. But strong mentors also pepper in positive encouragement to their trainees, highlighting areas where they’ve excelled and providing feedback on strengths.
■ Mentors should recognize that there are life and skills to be had outside of lab work. You’re a human, and you’re allowed to have a human life beyond being a scientist. You’re also allowed (and should be encouraged) to build additional skills (e.g., science writing, teaching, etc.) while you’re a trainee. Deciding to take extended travel or acquire additional formal responsibilities should be open conversations with your mentor.
■ Mentors should mediate conflicts in the lab. If you have an unresolvable conflict with a lab member over authorship, resources, and so on, it is ultimately your bosses’ responsibility to make a final decision.
■ Mentors should let you leave when you are ready. Great mentors not only recognize when their trainees are ready for the next step, but they’re also supportive of their trainees throughout the transition. Negotiating how projects will continue (or not) is an important conversation to have before leaving the lab. Most academic mentors won’t know much about the vast world outside of academia, but they shouldn’t be giving you unfair or biased ideas about it either. As the old adage (kind of) goes, once you’ve trained something, you need to let it go.