As a second-year graduate student, I haven’t worked in academia for very long; yet, it’s been long enough to hear several mentorship horror stories. I’ve heard stories of principal investigators (PIs) who are consistently verbally abusive, hang on to graduate students for eight years, or set a postdoc on fire. Early career researchers (graduate students
READ MORE ARTICLES

Mentoring is like parenting. Not to say you are being a parent, but rather, that the “training” you receive beforehand may be, “You’ll figure it out as you go along.” We have all seen movies or read books with classic mentorship roles—the coach of the football team, the cheerleader, and even the high-school counselor/gatekeeper that says, “You will never make it into that college with your grades.” These are all examples of mentors in the course taught by John Matsui, MCB15). This was the first course in which mentors were neatly categorized from their previously ambiguous roles. What is a mentor? Does being a good mentor require mentees with particular characteristics? Here are interesting perspectives I have heard from other mentors I greatly admire.
READ MORE ARTICLES