Why do you Need a Mentor?
From Stepping Up
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It is perfectly possible and acceptable to do very well without a mentor. Award-winning projects have been prepared by participants who had little to no external help and guidance. Some projects were designed completely independently, thus showing no apparent need for formal mentors.
It is notable that the vast majority of winners at top fairs have a mentor/advisor. That can be explained by a couple of factors:
- Mentors can provide you with the best resources;
- You can benefit from their broad experience;
- You can discuss your project and get connected.
Selecting a mentor may prove to be a difficult task. Many projects are simply too specialized or focus on an obscure field where there are few available mentors. You have to see if the advantages outweighs the trouble of the matching process.
Good access to resources
Keep in mind that not having access to professional lab facilities does not ruin your chance of winning in the slightest. Some truly amazing projects have been conducted in the kitchen or garage, or in the school lab.
However, having access to expensive (and super cool) equipment, sophisticated technologies, ... is going to let your take your project to a higher level! If a piece of equipment has been designed to carry a dedicated experiment, it might make it easier to control variables than on a home-made set-up.
Empirical sciences require bullet-proof methodologies and solid data to be able to support a new theory. Using high-tech equipment might look like a less involved solution than using modest or custom-built equipment; on the contrary, precise and accurate data results are quite more compelling (provided that they are presented at their best). Since you don't have to reinvent the wheel, you can focus on what matters most: your research approach!
A mentor can give you easy access to other useful resources (that you don't think of at first): specialized literature, controlled or hazardous chemicals, experimental organisms, etc.
Learning from past experience
An effective mentor is the bridge to past scientific life that will help make your project more feasible.
Mentors will know the difficulties of your project; they might even have tried something similar before! They are aware of current trends in your research field and will tell what is hot from what is not. They can show you different methods of data collections, analysis and interpretation process in your research project.
Mentors can help young scientists steer their project and their work in the right direction. It takes some humility to share the driving wheel between multiple persons. However, scientists greatly benefits from the passing of knowledge from one to another.
Developing a discussion
Most importantly, a mentor is someone who you can connect with. They can provide comments, criticism, advice and guidance to your proposed experimental idea. On the other hand, you provide an interest for a scientific question, dedication to your project and an unadulterated way of looking at things; in essence, you come like a breathe of fresh air!
Developing a good discussion with a mentor is essential to learn the competences of scientists: project management, specialized vocabulary, logical reasoning, and critical thinking. The discussion process will help to improve your proposed project and find solutions when you are stuck.
Finally, a mentor can be a valuable connection and a first step into the scientific community.
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