Who Am I Looking For?
From Stepping Up
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The interaction between a mentor and a student can be quite diverse. It may consist of someone 250 miles away with whom you can exchange ideas electronically. It might be someone who reads your manuscripts and makes commentary. It could be a school teacher that you meet with to discuss your project after every few weeks.
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Who Is a Mentor?
A mentor is somebody that will provide guidance for your project.
It can be a specialist with valuable knowledge or experience in a particular field. It can also be somebody that will give general supervision for the project. Nowadays, research projects tend to be quite interdisciplinary. In that case, you can have more than one person helping you on different aspects.
Mentors can include:
- Professionals
- Academics
- Researchers
- Teachers
- Former-Science Fair participants
- Older students (high school or university students)
- Any other experts.
What Can a Mentor Do?
The role of mentor is to advise and accompany the student during the many steps of the project.
- Mentors can point to valuable resources to plan the experimental design,
- They can offer tips on refining details of the methodology,
- They can help you troubleshooting difficult experiments,
- They can show you different methods of data collections and analysis,
- They can discuss the interpretation of results,
- Mentors are great for getting input on your research,
- You can even chat on how your backboard looks!
A mentor will augment the overall quality of a student's work by fine tuning the finer details.
What Can't a Mentor Do?!
Their responsabilities
You might wonder what kind of conditions are appropriate to work with a mentor? What can be expected from a mentor?
- Mentors should not take over your project, or give advices without explanations;
- They should not manipulate you to do their own work, at the expense of your project;
- They should recognize that you are a science fair participant, and not a grad student; that you are only starting to learn and might not know even some basic things, and that you can only do so much.
- They should ensure that you work in a safe environment and that you are supervised at all times in a laboratory.
Your responsabilities
It is a great privilege when somebody open the doors for you and take the time to help you. You should have at least a basic level of professionalism and respect!
- YOU are responsible for the design and carrying of experiments, as well as for the analysis and interpretation of results, NOT your supervisor.
- When the mentor is in charge, for instance in the laboratory, you should abide by their decisions, discuss any initiatives beforehand and inform them of any unanticipated situations.
- Punctuality is the politeness of princes! Let your mentor know if you cannot make it for an appointment, and take good notes so they don't have to repeat themselves endlessly.
Handling conflicts
How does one tell the difference between good and bad mentor?
- There are not necessarily good and bad mentors, but they sometimes act in the wrong way for some reason. It might be the first time they work with a Science Fair participant, hence they have to adapt.
You need to know when to talk to mentor about the process. Be direct but tactful. A good approach is to focus on a single issue at a time and to discuss in an open and constructive manner.
In some situations, it is best advised to let go of your mentor if things aren’t working out. A final note: remember that, in science as in other things, Fun is Mandatory!
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