One of the things that has surprised me most about the Kenan Fellows program is my relationship with my mentor. \u00a0My initial expectation was that it would be a pretty one-sided relationship. \u00a0He would do the giving – lab access, information, instructions, supervision. \u00a0I would be the taker; I’d get in the way, ask questions, take up time. \u00a0I felt, to a certain extent, as if I was going into the Fellowship blind. \u00a0There was a lot I didn’t understand about the expectations, and I assumed that my mentor would clarify those things, give me a schedule, and so forth.<\/p>\n
As it turned out, though I certainly wouldn’t say it was an equal relationship, it was a lot closer than I had expected. \u00a0All those things that were fuzzy to me about the program expectations? \u00a0Also fuzzy to my mentor. \u00a0Initially, this was sort of terrifying. \u00a0I like order and structure. \u00a0I often affectionately refer to myself as pathologically conscientious. \u00a0How was I supposed to know if I was meeting expectations if no one knew what the expectations were?! \u00a0Ultimately, of course, we figured it out together, and that turned out to be a much better arrangement than just being told what to do.<\/p>\n
Over the course of the summer, I found that the lack of structure allowed me freedom to work with almost every member of the lab, from undergraduates to my mentor himself, and to organize\u00a0my time to best suit my curriculum development. \u00a0This was a huge benefit because everyone in the lab amazed me with both how willing they were to teach me, and how good they were at it. \u00a0When I struggled to understand something, they happily went over it time and time again, sought out other resources for me, and helped me keep a positive attitude until I got it. \u00a0In short, they confirmed for me everything I have told my students about how important communication and collaboration are in science.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
One of the things that has surprised me most about the Kenan Fellows program is my relationship with my mentor. \u00a0My initial expectation was that it would be a pretty one-sided relationship. \u00a0He would do the giving – lab access, information, instructions, supervision. \u00a0I would be the taker; I’d get in the way, ask questions, … Continue reading The Fellow\/Mentor Relationship – A True Partnership<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":454,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-74","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/old.kenanfellows.org\/2017-abernier\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/old.kenanfellows.org\/2017-abernier\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/old.kenanfellows.org\/2017-abernier\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/old.kenanfellows.org\/2017-abernier\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/454"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/old.kenanfellows.org\/2017-abernier\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=74"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/old.kenanfellows.org\/2017-abernier\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":75,"href":"https:\/\/old.kenanfellows.org\/2017-abernier\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74\/revisions\/75"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/old.kenanfellows.org\/2017-abernier\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=74"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/old.kenanfellows.org\/2017-abernier\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=74"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/old.kenanfellows.org\/2017-abernier\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=74"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}