What’s a Mentor?

Grace is in her late twenties and is in her sixth year of graduate studies in molecular biology. For the past five years, she has been working in the lab of a well-known professor, which she knows she needs to do in order to “make it” in her field. However, Grace is not completely sure that she wants to follow the academic career route. This is in part because she feels that the life of a postdoc is difficult, and in part because she has difficulty with her current lab advisor’s very “hands-on” managerial style. Grace feels that because of her advisor’s style, there is hardly any collegiality in the lab. In addition, because she is in her sixth year of graduate school, Grace is switching from working for her advisor to working for herself, which means that she is a potential competitor with her advisor. Now, Grace believes, the relationship with her advisor is tense because of this competitive situation. 

Grace is in her late twenties, in her sixth year of graduate studies in molecular biology. She has been working in the lab of a well-known professor for the past five years, which has given her the opportunity to apply much of what she has learned in classes. These prominent lab positions can be tough to secure, but Grace knows that if she is going to “make it” in this field, she must work in a lab and get a positive recommendation from the head of the lab, her advisor.

Years ago, Grace attended a public high school where some members of the faculty decided to start a science fair program. She initially wanted to be in this class so that she and her best friend could be together; however, she soon realized that this program was the best extracurricular outlet for bright kids in her school who were interested in science, and it was through this activity that she developed a sense of “how to do science.” Working on her first project, which required experiments to be done at odd hours of the night, she formed an appreciation for solitude that is important in her work today.

However, now, after six years in graduate school, Grace is not sure that she wants to follow the academic-career route. Daunted by the prospect of spending another four-to-six years as a postdoctoral candidate, living with few economic resources, only to enter a very competitive academic job market (and even then, perhaps not securing a good position), she is struggling. In her mind, because postdocs are neither students nor faculty members, they have a somewhat marginalized position in universities and do not receive much institutional support.

Grace further explains:

“Postdocs have a very hard life. They’re under-compensated. Their prospects for the future are very bleak because [there are] very few jobs available as professors. They’re not supported by their institute really. Because they’re not considered employees or students of the institute. They’re considered sort of like parasites using the space, but yet they’re doing this incredible, great work that the institute needs to keep going. So they have a hard time. They have problems with their advisors because they’re trying to forge careers themselves and so are their advisors. So they need projects that they can take away and form a new lab with and sometimes advisors don’t like to give out those kinds of projects. Because they want to keep everything in their own basket. So [there are] these sets of issues, and so I’m really considering leaving, going and getting a job in business or law or anything that will take me because, although I really want to be a professor, I do not want to go though being a postdoc. The investment is so high that the fact that the possible payoff is so low is a real issue.”

Grace believes that, like her colleagues, she is hardworking, self-motivated, and intelligent. As a child, her parents provided a developmental environment that was high in support and low in structure, which forced her to self-regulate her workload and schedule. In contrast, Grace’s current lab advisor has a very “hands-on” managerial style, which means that he will ask her questions about the progress of her work two or three times a day. This creates a great deal of pressure, and at times Grace has been so worried about her advisor’s questions that she was physically affected by the stress. Grace “hates” this kind of management style. She explains:

“There’s a definite benefit to having a very hands-on advisor. You get to learn everything. They don’t let you get derailed. They’ll redirect experiments that are not working … But the flip side of it is, yeah, you’re always under pressure to answer this person. You always get nervous and upset if you can’t answer them. And that’s evil. So I think that really, in just the last year, year and a half, I’ve just sort of gotten to a point where I really feel that I’m competent to design and interpret experiments independently. And so, you know, it’s much more now we’re in this like, ‘Don’t you come over here’ stage because I’m thinking about this on my own. And I will come and tell you about it when I’m done!

And it’s just been a long struggle … It was very hard for him to learn to let go. It’s like parenting kids in many senses. The kids feel ready to be independent long before the parent has decided that they are. So you go through this rebellion phase. But, unfortunately, we’re all disguised in this professional environment so you can’t spike your hair and scream, ‘I hate you.’ You have to do something else, like say, ‘well, I disagree with your hypothesis.’ That’s really the same thing.”

Though she works very closely with her advisor, she does not identify him as a mentor since, as she says:

“When I use the word—‘mentor’—it has a very positive kind of slant to it; it implies that someone, in a very enlightened way, is helping you navigate and helping you to become all that you can be. So I don’t think with my present advisor that there is as much of a sense of closeness and trust. I don’t inherently believe that most of his actions are the best things for me. There is not really a sense of trust or sense of personal support.”

Grace describes other frustrations with her advisor in addition to his managerial style, including a constant pressure to publish findings, even before the data has been checked. She speaks of a situation in which she had completed research on a particular cellular phenomenon. Once she had finished, she learned of a related phenomenon that she was not able to fully bring together with her findings. For this reason, she was not sure about publishing her data because she felt the paper lacked rigor. Her advisor told her to be easier on herself and encouraged her to try to publish the findings even with an unsolved piece. He said, “You know, hey, you can’t make sense of every mutant. You just can’t expect to make sense of everything. So it’s okay. Your experiments on these two that make sense are strong, and believe them, believe in yourself, go ahead, publish them.”

However, Grace feels that this would have been deceptive. She explains:

“It’s not right. I mean, I have information that sheds doubt on those two. So, much as it may be great for me to put it out there … [I] don’t want to take the risk. I mean, all you have in science is your reputation. So if you publish things that are wrong more than once, you’re really in trouble.”

Furthermore, Grace feels that because of her advisor’s style, there is minimal collegiality in the lab, which does not lead to a sharing culture among peers, one of the pillars of scientific research. Decisions, for example, are largely mandated by her advisor, whereas, “in an ideal world … we would all sit down and talk to each other.”

At this point, Grace finds herself in a difficult situation, because in her sixth year of graduate school, “I’m sort of at the point where I’m almost on par, or at least I should be, with my advisor.” This makes it “harder for the mentor relationship to exist.” Grace explains that in this last year she has switched from working for her advisor to working for herself. She calls this an “adolescence” of sorts, in which she is working to form an identity outside of her advisor’s lab. “I’m starting to make my own decisions, sort of. For the first five [years], my advisor guided the majority of my work largely due to his management style—very hands-on.” Now, Grace believes, the relationship with her advisor is tense because of this competitive situation and because “it’s very difficult for him to separate personal feelings from scientific ones.” She says:

“I know in an ideal setting, it would be true that your advisors would have ways of talking to students and postdocs that separates science from the individual, but it just doesn’t happen in the real world. And I think that part of that is that the people who become advisors are selected because they are great scientists, not because they are managers [and] not because they have well-developed interpersonal skills. So, you get these people who have spent their whole life at a bench and all of [a] sudden, they’re in charge of fifteen people. Where were they supposed to learn?”

Grace’s relationship to her work has been deeply affected by her relationship to her advisor. She is troubled by what the immediate future holds, and seems to be questioning whether to continue on the path she originally laid out for herself. 

How would you define “good” mentorship? How would you advise Grace to tackle this situation? Have you ever had a relationship with an advisor or supervisor that didn’t go well? What did you do?