I never really thought I was, but I got an email today from a former co-worker. She is leaving where we worked together, for a different company. I have been retired for 3 years, but she thought to include me in her good-bye email.
When I wished her good luck, she sent another email thanking me for helping her along the way, and telling me I was a big part of her growth.
She came to the company as a new grad. I was not her supervisor, but she worked on several projects that I managed. She did, indeed, grow in her confidence and experience.
I gotta admit, it feels good to have someone think you help them, but the reality is, she was good at what she did. I just made sure others knew that, as well.
I am looking forward to seeing the responses to this thread from folks with careers in business, government and teaching.
As an academic scientist, mentorship of graduate students and post docs was a major part of my job description. I was not as successful as many in terms of numbers - I count 5 grad students, 6 post docs and one junior colleague with whom I have collaborated intensely for a decade, as mentees. These were all pretty intense relationships stretching over 2-10 years. One was a bit fraught - he is now a very successful research scientist but probably is not going out of his way to acknowledge my mentorship, all the others were very satisfying. My biggest fear (always a
huge source of stress for me) was having a student or post doc spend years with me and then head out to an unsuccessful career. Fortunately things worked out. Of my 5 students, one is very successful senior researcher for a US government agency, one is an early-mid-career scientist with a US government agency, one is a very successful senior government scientist in Europe, one went on to apply his mathematical expertise on Wall Street and has been quite successful (unfortunately lost track of him in recent years), and one married into a very rich family and is out of science and presumably helping to manage his in-laws' businesses. Of my post docs, one went into finance and was quite successful but passed away suddenly in his mid-50's, one is back in China as a big academic administrator, one has a successful career, not as a researcher, but still applying his scientific expertise in a big company in Europe, one is a successful early/mid-career researcher with a European government agency, one is still an early career research scientist with a private company in the US, and one is just starting as an assistant professor at a Japanese university. My long-term junior collaborator is now a quite successful research scientist with a Japanese government agency.
So I have intensely mentored only one person now on the professor track (an ideal 1-for-1 replacement in the professoriate that is not growing anywhere - outside of China and possibly some less developed countries), but have hopefully helped start careers of folks who are making/will make contributions in the government and private sectors.
I am not sure I ever inspired enough confidence in my younger faculty colleagues to ever have any consider me as a mentor. I frequently "joked" that I could serve as a bad example for younger faculty colleagues.
Anyways for those who read through this, thanks for indulging these memories. I hope we may have some interesting contributions from others here on E-R.org.
