Finding a Mentor
In this Kosmos Online Podcast, I talk with Institute for Humane Studies program officers Dr. Nigel Ashford, Dr. Bill Glod and Dr. Phil Magness about finding a mentor and how to best utilize that relationship.
Jeanne Hoffman. Welcome to this Kosmos Online podcast. I’m Jeanne Hoffman. Today I’m talking with Institute for Humane Studies Program Officers Dr. Nigel Ashford, Dr. Bill Glod, and Dr. Phil Magness about finding a mentor who is friendly to your classical liberal views. Welcome gentlemen, and thanks for joining us!
Nigel Ashford, Bill Glod, Phil Magness. Thank you.
JH. Now who should be my mentor?
Nigel Ashford. Your ideal mentor should be your advisor, the person who’s got the most direct influence on your work and gives you the most direct degree of feedback. A mentor is somebody who should be interested not only in your academic work, your current academic work, but also takes a long-term interest in your academic careers. Not just thinking about finishing the dissertation, but how to launch you into your academic career. An ideal advisor is somebody who does both. Sometimes they’re good at the former and not the latter.
Phil Magness. I’d echo all of what Nigel said. Basically when you’re looking for a mentor, for an advisor who can fill a mentoring role, you want someone who can be both your advocate, your advocate before other academics in your department, other scholars in your field, but also someone who will challenge your work in a respectful environment, someone who will drive you to produce high quality scholarship.
JH. How can I tell if my advisor isn’t going to be sufficient for my needs?
NA. Almost certainly, they won’t be (laughter). There will be more things that you want. But it is an important question in helping you to choose your advisor. Is this the right person for you? To some extent it will be partly driven by your area of research. Indeed, that my influence the research area you choose, if you find the person in your department who is interested in what you thought you were interested in, but someone you would not have a good relationship with, that might affect sort of what the issues are that you want to look at. Having an advisor, I can’t overestimate how important it is to have a good advisor.
Bill Glod. I think also, this is incumbent upon people who are early in their graduate program, to ask around and judge for yourself the kind of advice that you’re getting. If you’re getting fairly superficial advice from one of the people in the department, whereas you’re getting answers to things you didn’t even know you didn’t know from somebody else, the latter person is more likely to be a better mentor. They’re going to be more attuned to giving you the straight dope.
PM. Be attentive when you’re planning out your coursework. You have probably about two years of coursework going into a Ph. D. program, use that as kind of a testing ground on different professors, different faculty that you may want to study with, see what their teaching styles are, how they incorporate their own research into the class, how they receive your own papers and projects that are turned in for that class.
JH. I have a feeling that we’re going to be saying the term “classical liberal,” so I just want to point out a common abbreviation for that is CL, so listeners if we keep saying that we mean “classical liberal.” So what are the pros and cons of having an openly classical liberal mentor versus someone who is friendly but not classical liberal?
BG. I think it would be ideal to have a CL mentor so they can share their experiences with overcoming the unique challenge of being a CL scholar in a sometimes unfriendly environment. It’s not essential that your mentor be all that sympathetic or all that friendly to classical liberal views, provided they respect you as a scholar and they care genuinely about your academic success, as Nigel said earlier. There are a lot of people like that in my field of philosophy. Most professors are interested in ideas, in a good argument, even if they don’t agree with the argument at the end of the day. If they’re professional, they will take you seriously even if they aren’t that friendly to classical liberal views.
NA. You shouldn’t also assume that if a professor is classical liberal, they will necessarily like the work that you do. For example, very often in academia, the divisions are on methodology rather than on the substance of the work. You might find someone who is CL, but whose methodological approach is completely different from yours. You might find someone who’s not CL but who’s open-minded and methodological examines the same questions that you do, I would go for the latter rather than the former.
BG. Also don’t assume that because a professor is CL they would be a good mentor. Unfortunately, there are some not necessarily great mentors.
PM. Steer clear of dogmatism but look for a CL scholar is established in his or her department, is respected among other faculty. In that sense, the senior scholar that you’re studying under can in many ways provide credibility to your work, and attestation to your work before other members of your department, who are not necessarily even hostile to that tradition but aren’t well-versed in it.
NA. Also, you shouldn’t only think about having a mentor. Ideally you have several mentors. Your advisor, ideally, should be one, but there may be other faculty members in your department that you should draw upon. There are people perhaps in other departments in your university you should draw upon, they may be faculty outside your university you want to work with, and program officers can sometimes act, partly anyway, that role of mentor. So don’t just think of the one person, think of having a community of mentors.
BG. I think that’s right, I think sometimes you’re going to get contradictory advice and you’re going to have to decide for yourself who’s giving the more apt advice. Don’t fall into the habit of taking one person’s advice as gospel.
NA. Just because you get it from a program officer, don’t be upset if you don’t take that advice.
JH. How do I approach someone to be my mentor, if I’m unsure of the framework with which they approach their research?
PM. Part of that’s a knowledge issue. You want to find out what their area of research happens to be. This is getting to know the faculty, that’s what your courses are about, that’s what interacting with them in office hours and outside of the classroom is about. If you suspect that a certain faculty member is studying in an area that might be of interest to you, feel free to contact them. Send them an email, drop by and see if they’re willing to talk about it. Get to know the person that you’re engaging on their ideas and their research before jumping headfirst into forming a dissertation committee.
NA. An obvious thing is to read what they have written. When they’re writing, do they appear to, at least, show respect for classical liberal ideas, and feel that they have to engage with classical liberal ideas, or do they write their works as if classical liberalism did not exist. The former, I think, would be a good person to work with, the latter would be a bad person to work with, because that suggests that they’re not really at all interested in engaging with classical liberal ideas.
BG. Also, when you’re, this may be more apt when you’re searching for graduate programs to apply to, look at the various departments. Sometimes, we have information on people who have been alums before with us that we can say, “You know, definitely, this is someone who is sympathetic or somebody who’s open, who in lots of cases will have that idea.” Unfortunately, in lots of cases the world’s still small enough that we have a relatively good grasp on the people in our disciplines who have sympathies.
JH. If someone isn’t classical liberal, how do I, as a student, sort of drop the fact that I am to them?
NA. I don’t understand why you would need to say, “I am classical liberal.” You’re approaching these things with certain questions. You have a certain hypothesis, but I think it’s a mistake to label yourself as that. That will come out as your mentors discover, “Oh these are the things that motivate your interest in these questions.” I think you should avoid labeling yourself.
BG. On the other hand, I don’t think you should closet yourself either, in the sense of just trying to take any kind of steps to conceal that you have these sympathies, that’s a bad strategy because it’s going to come out what your sympathies are, you’ll come across as a deceiver once your cover is blown. It also creates cognitive dissonance. You have these ideas that you’re passionate about, you’re going into a career in ideas, and now you’re sort of trying to expend a lot of energy to cover up those ideas, lest you be outed. That’s not a good mental framework to be in. Grad school’s probably the time when you’re going to be expending the most mental energy you have to expend in your life, and you need to focus your energy on doing just that, and not spend it on becoming a split personality.
PM. If you’ve done your research, found the right advisor, and is the right person to work with for your particular area, he’s probably not going to hold it against you that you happen to have political beliefs in one direction or another. In fact, it can be a good source of conversation. One of my grad school mentors I ended up TA’ing a class under him, was a liberal democrat. We used to go out to lunch or dinner before the classes, and sit there for half an hour, an hour just talking politics. It was a respectful environment, we had some great conversations out of it, in a sense our difference on views kind of deepened our understanding of each other, deepened our friendship with each other, it was simply a matter of finding the right advisor, someone who has accepting of other ideas and willing to discuss them openly.
NA. Your research, again, is so important to you cause you’re going to live with this for some period of time. I’ve seen several graduate students make the mistake of choosing their advisors research agenda: what interests their advisor doesn’t interest them. They end up which doesn’t motivate their interest. If you’re coming to these question because presumable you have some framework, some view of the world, that is going to keep you going what’s going to be sometimes a quite difficult period of time. Don’t adopt somebody else’s agenda: make sure you’re clear about your own.
PM. Remember your dissertation is not the end of the road. There are some things to be taken from a scholarly prospective outside of your dissertation, post-graduation. In fact, that’s probably the key step in moving into a career faculty position. You want to be researching something that you like, that you enjoy, that you intend to spend several years of your life well beyond grad school.
JH. I know you guys went into this a bit in previous question, but what else should I look for in a mentor?
BG. You should look for someone who will stand beside you, provided you earn that person’s esteem. And you can get a good idea of mentor by asking senior grad students in your department, sort of “How is this person to work with” to get a good idea. This is good information to have as early as possible, don’t wait until the last minute to get this kind of information. As Phil was saying, a lot of this will come out through different professors pedagogy, through their research. You can get a different idea of how they are and how they conduct themselves.
NA. Another thing I would look for is someone who is active in the intellectual community themselves. Either they themselves are going out to conferences and giving papers, or are involved with organizations, they understand the value of that and they will help you to make those connections. My own context, have an advisor who took me to the European Studies Association, with my work on the European Union I then knew everyone in that field. Another took me to an American Politics Association, I met everybody in that field. You want to look for someone who doesn’t only stay at home and write, but are actively engaged in the academic community.
PM. Just to add one thing on a purely practical and self-interested perspective, you want an advisor who’s reliable and accessible. You want someone who gets things done, who gets chapters of your dissertation back to you in a timely manner. You don’t want to be sitting around for ten years in the process of writing a dissertation where most of the hang-up is the person you chose to be your advisor returning from a six-month research trip in Europe.
BG. Also I think with regard to the type of advice you get, you don’t want a mentor who is just telling you what you want to hear, who is buttering you up, you want, as Nigel says it, some tough love. You want someone who can praise you when praise is due, you don’t want just negative criticism, but you want someone who will call you out when you’re acting like a rookie, which sometimes you’re going to do. Again, you don’t know what you don’t know in lots of cases. You need someone who is willing to give you the harsh criticism when you need it sometimes as a wakeup call.
JH. So to kind of reverse things a little bit, you were talking about the kind of things to look for in a mentor. How can I be the type of student that mentors want to mentor?
PM. The first thing is don’t be needy, don’t be overly demanding of your advisor, you want your advisor to think of you as a future colleague they want to work with, and if you are respectful of their position, you’re a self-starter in your own research, demonstrating that you’re doing something of intellectual worth, is interesting to them, it will be rewarded. You may find, after you get to know your advisor fairly well through your program that they have a common research strain with you. They may be inviting you to be on a panel with, or to co-author a paper together. That’s one of the rewards that comes out, but you have to make that initial investment of demonstrating that you are a respectful mentee, that you are someone who’s capable of taking drive into his or her own hands and reaching out to that particular advisor.
BG. I agree with all that and when your professor gives you advice take it, if they see your consistently not taking their advice that’s going to affect their opinion of you. Also, don’t underestimate the value of conducting yourself professionally. A lot of times really glowing letters of recommendations don’t just go into your strengths as a scholar but your value as a colleague and as a person, and that will be vital on the job market, those letter writers can set you apart, by emphasizing in great detail, ways in which your advisor says, “hey this person sat down with me once a month and I would give him criticism and he would come back and send me an email the next day addressing some of the stuff we were talking about, and they were really engaged. They were absorbing advice, they had a willingness to learn and willingness to be a good scholar. That kind of person is still kind of rare, it seems like from letters of recommendation I’ve read, where people are willing to go into that kind of detail of how a person conducts themselves as a true colleague, not a lowly lost lamb of a grad student.
NA. The most important things is this transition from not being a student anymore to being a colleague. You have to take responsibility for your career, but let me disagree with Bill on one thing. I don’t think you should always take a recommendation on what the advisor says, what I think you should do is you should give it respect for what your advisor says, and if you reject it you need to give some good reasons why you reject it. But sometimes advisors are not perfect, they may give you bad advice, but you should at least think about that, discuss it with other people before you reject that advice.
BG. That’s a better way of putting it, thanks Nigel (laughter)
JH. It seems like you’re saying a mentor can do a lot for a student, but on a student’s end, how can they repay their mentor for everything they’re doing?
NA. One of these things, I don’t think graduate students appreciate is that, they are seen as their advisor’s students, so when you go out in the world you are known as X’s student. The most important thing is for you to do an extremely good job in your academic life to show that you are producing high-quality work, and you do show respect to other people. That is what I think the advisor wants. They want to feel that you are a good example, like a child, you’re showing that they brought you up in the right way academically. That’s the most important way, I think, you can pay your advisor back.
BG. I think that’s right, in sort of thinking about a response to this, it’s sort of like a parent-child relationship in that the reciprocity, it’s not necessarily bilateral, it’s pay-it-forward. Likewise your professor was mentored by somebody, and their mentor wanted them to be the kind of scholar that now has you as a student and then you pay it forward by being the kind of scholar that keeps a good legacy. I think a lot of how it works is pay it forward. A lot of times your intellectual debts to your advisor is not something you can repay, and it’s not something you’re supposed to be repaid, and that’s not how it works. It’s more forward-looking.
PM. I agree with everything. You want to repay your advisor by being a good colleague, by being someone they can work with in the future, that they can take pride in your own successes as a student. Academic lineages can be traced back centuries, all the way back to Adam Smith up to the modern Austrian school, and there’s some value that’s gained from that. If you are fulfilling your role as a good colleague, your advisor, your mentor will want to work with you. They’re going to want to give you help and boost in your career. They’re going to want to invite you to write a paper with them, and it’s a long-term relationship that will last through your lifetime.
JH. Thank you once again for your time and your sage advice. For more career advice visit kosmosonline.org. Connecting the network of liberty-advancing academics. This is Jeanne Hoffman, signing off.