barriers to me being an effective mentor, thus far

Yesterday I blogged that mentorship has been on my mind all week. The truth is that mentorship is probably on my mind every day, as part of my job involves mentoring and guiding my own junior people (graduate students, undergraduate students, people I meet online, and even some of my colleagues who are junior to me). Yesterday was likely a tipping point, between a meeting I had with another workshop attendee and a conversation with the person I tweeted up with while I was here (which was fun and nothing to get nervous about and I'm still pretending that person doesn't have a direct line to my brain via the blog). I'd like to think that hopefully blogging helps someone - and that's a form of mentorship - but official mentorship is also a crucial component of my job.

I've never blogged about it before, but if you knew me in person you'd know that mentorship is the aspect of my job which brings me the most stress. In fact, without any people to mentor, I think I'd be a completely different professor with a completely different state of mind right now. In the past six months I've become convinced I really, really suck as a mentor - when I make a list of the things that have burnt me out so much, having people to mentor tops the list.

I could probably blog about all the reasons I suck as a mentor. But that would involve blogging about my students, and I don't do that. Suffice to say I feel completely un-anchored and lost in this aspect of my career. I vaguely remember starting my job with a plan and some proactive strategies that have devolved into putting out fires. I am in reactive mode and have been so for most of the past 2 years. Lately I've returned to being proactive and have had some success, but it's been baby steps. Figuring out where the line is between my success and their success is difficult. The model that appeared to work for my adviser doesn't work for me.

What I can blog about are my perceived barriers to being a mentor to others: 

1. I had a clear image of what I thought I was getting into, but I was wrong. I'm sure this is probably a summary statement that can be applied to almost any realm of disappointment for a new professor. I had an expectation and an image of how an academic program would work, based on my experiences in my own academic program. This is not how my department works. Our students' career goals are different, our courses are structured differently, funding is much different, etc. When you don't understand the rules of the game, it's impossible to be successful at it. It's difficult to successfully mentor others when you are still trying to figure out how the system works.

2. I did not fully understand the environment I was getting myself into. When I interviewed at PCU, the faculty had an invested interest in me being pleased with the environment that I would be working in. So they sold it to me in a certain way. Some of that wasn't accurate. But I didn't know the players well enough to know who to believe (and neither will most people, on an interview). Yesterday I was talking about triangulating information from different sources on an interview by asking the same questions of different people - a good strategy but that will only take you so far. Once again, I didn't understand the system I was working in. There are two ways in which this has had a negative impact on my experience of my job as a mentor. First, I didn't understand the boundaries, expectations, and goals of the people I mentor. I assumed they would be the same as mine and the program I came from. (I know that is vague, sorry). Second, I was sold a career opportunity that would create synergy between my research and professional development goals (including mentoring) that didn't exist. In fact, I've now learned that every new faculty member has been sold that opportunity and over the course of the past 15 years no one has managed to make it successful.

3. I am a visibly young, female professor. I am not entirely sure that my gender impacts my ability to mentor, but I am willing to strongly entertain the possibility. My friends in the profession insist it does. My age makes mentoring a challenge - I am close in age or even younger than my graduate students. I use the same social media sites (although I don't interact with them on social media on a personal level!), I listen to similar music, attend similar events in our community, have similar cohort-related values, etc., etc., etc. I do think this makes it challenging for me to be taken seriously. I wish it didn't. Clearly, my age and gender don't preclude the fact that I have a doctorate and I have expertise in my area. That doesn't seem to be what my mentees assume, however.

4. I have a personal value system of authenticity that interferes with my ability to appear authoritative. Sometimes we have blind spots, and this is one of mine. It has taken me a while to see that I have a personal value system that interferes with my ability to be seen as authoritative and in charge. It is important for me to be myself, always. Does that mean I act the same in a faculty meeting as I do with my friends at a concert? Or that I relate to my students the same way I relate to the people I date? Or that I act the same with my Dean as I do with my friends from home? Absolutely not. But I know some of my personality characteristics likely interfere with seeming "in charge." I don't know how to resolve this, but at least I am aware of it. I think that's a step in the right direction. Pretending to be someone I'm not sounds exhausting, but I do need to try something different. (That being said I do have mentees with whom my style works perfectly. So there is a lesson in that as well).

5. I have a difficult time quitting or giving up on people. This is a personality characteristic that adds an extra level of complication to my role as a mentor. I don't quit on people. Yeah, that sounds like it might be a good thing - but there are a lot of situations in which it is actually a bad thing. I have this problem with friends, romantic partners, students, people I conslut for, and people I mentor. But not everyone is capable of doing what you hope they'd be capable of. Sometimes being a good mentor is knowing when to draw a line and say "We're done here." I'm getting better, but it still is a hurdle that pains me to get over.

6. After the first year or so of being new, no one guides you anymore and you don't know what you don't know. The first year of my job, my colleagues were great at asking me if I needed anything, guiding me through that first year of new processes and procedures, and answering my questions. Unfortunately, becoming a professor means not knowing what you don't know - how the procedures to submit an MA thesis work at your University, for example. How to create a committee for your students (and this isn't even written down anywhere in my department). How to prepare your application for a merit increase. Even more difficult is the fact that not everything you will ever need to do as a professor happens in that first year. For example, some of my students will be defending dissertations this year. I have no idea how that works. Hopefully I will know all of the right questions to ask.

In all the months I've been anguishing over my inability to (seemingly, by my standards), be a successful mentor, I've been taking the blame on as my own. I have been thinking that if I could just figure out the magic thing to change about myself, then maybe this would all click into place. But it didn't occur to me until this week - between a workshop and a conversation yesterday - that there are barriers beyond me as a person that interfere with my ability to be effective. Some of them are about me - but some of them are also about the system I work in, the colleagues who I work with, and the people I am trying to mentor.