Mentoring
The backstory
In 2011, Diana Kimball Berlin launched a distributed mentoring movement.
She called it /mentoring — as in, yourwebsite.com/mentoring — and she hoped that, one day, it might become as common to every site as an ‘About’ page.
“The purpose of /mentoring is to get people to essentially hang their sign out that they are open to mentoring. No need to wonder or ask,” writes Roz Duffy. “They’re announcing to the world that they are willing to help others and will provide their time and thoughts to those who seek guidance in the areas that the mentor has established they have experience in.”
Say hello!
Very few of the experiences I’ve learned and grown from over the years would have materialized were it not for the people who guided, supported, questioned, and encouraged me along the way.
In an effort to pay that forward, I’d be delighted to share what I’ve learned with anyone who’s interested in pursuing a similar path. If that’s you, don’t hesitate to reach out with any questions you may have.
Topics might include:
– Venturing into unfamiliar territory. I left business school more than two years into a four-year degree, decided to study something entirely different, and to this day have never felt as though I made the wrong choice. From that initial decision, I’ve continued to shape my career through a series of what Molly Graham has termed “j-curves”: “a risky career choice … where you bet that you can transfer the skills you currently have to a completely new environment.”
– Deciding to go to grad school, apply for research funding, pursue a career in academia, or leave academia for a career in industry. To-date, I’ve been awarded over a quarter of a million dollars in funding for my research from top universities in Canada, the US, and the UK; taught classes at the university level to both undergraduate and graduate students; presented at numerous conferences and colloquia; produced three successful, federally funded grant applications; and signed a book deal. My experiences, moreover, extend from the social sciences and humanities to STEM fields.
– Navigating a career change. Despite earning offers of admission to some of the top PhD programs in English literary scholarship in the world — to the University of Cambridge, for example, and to the University of Oxford — I chose, instead, to take a gap year after completing my M.A. at McGill and to apply to a new set of PhD programs in an entirely different discipline. I’ve since earned a STEM-based PhD in Information Science.
Start by telling me a little bit about you and your work — links are wonderful if you have them to share — and then let me know how I can help.