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Memoirs of a SLACer

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Another lesson from an anti-mentor »

Mentor and anti-mentor

June 8, 2009 by John

In seven years as a graduate student I’ve had a lot of time to think about what makes somebody a good mentor.  I’ve even served on committees for the purpose of awarding good mentoring.  Since I started teaching, I’ve also had a few opportunities to serve as a mentor myself, both to my own students and to incoming graduate students in my program.  I consider myself lucky to have had excellent mentors throughout my academic career, which I hope will continue when I begin as an assistant professor in the fall.  These excellent mentors have instilled in me beliefs about what mentors should do.  For example, whenever a professor and a student (graduate or undergraduate) are meeting for food or (non-alcoholic) drink, the professor should pay.  Unfortunately, my graduate student salary has prevented me from acting on this belief with my current mentees, but I plan to start doing so as soon as I get my first real check.

Even more than my mentors, however, I have developed beliefs about what mentors should do based on my anti-mentors.  Female Science Professor has discussed anti-mentors in the past, but my conception of the term is different.  While she describes anti-mentors as “people who actively try to discourage you, but not out of kindness or wisdom,” I think of them as people who have mentoring styles that cause you to vow never to mentor students in that way.  I’ve mentioned a particular experience with an anti-mentor before.  At times over the years, I’ve watched his interactions with his students and felt glad that this early experience led me to avoid him.  While his mentoring style is very hands-on, I prefer somebody who can provide advice when I ask for it along with gentle nudges to keep me on track.

In this way my dissertation advisor is a perfect match.  When I met with her on the day that an early draft of a dissertation chapter was due but had not completed the draft, she didn’t reprimand me.  We talked about a few other things and then I left, promising to send her the draft soon.  I left her office feeling like I had let her down, despite the fact that she didn’t seem let down at all.  Without saying a word, she motivated me more than a stern lecture from the professor above.

Comparing my mentor and anti-mentor, I am struck by the fact that the most important aspect of mentoring appears to be flexibility.  The anti-mentor is the type of person that you describe to incoming graduate students as “a great mentor… for those who prefer his mentoring style” while my dissertation advisor can be described as “a great mentor.”  While she uses a hands-off style with me, meeting as needed, there are other students with whom she meets every week to provide hands-on feedback and support.  Students need different forms of mentoring and, especially in a small department, professors need to work to provide what they need.  Of course, without the anti-mentor I may not have realized this.  I suppose that stern lecture did me some good after all.

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Posted in Dissertation Netherworld, Grad School, Teaching Tricks | Tagged Anti-Mentor, Dissertation Advisor, Graduate Student, Mentee, Mentor, Professor, Undergraduate Student | 5 Comments

5 Responses

  1. on June 17, 2009 at 7:23 am A blessing and a curse « Memoirs of a SLACer

    […] school paper-writing tactics with each one.  This time, I missed a few deadlines.  Thankfully, my advisor understood how to motivate me and the chapters eventually got done, then revised, and then submitted to my […]


  2. on September 16, 2010 at 9:15 pm I don’t know what I’m doing « Memoirs of a SLACer

    […] to draw on for examples of what kind of teacher I wanted to be.  Beyond my experiences with various mentors over the years, I am quickly realizing that I was never advised about choosing courses as an […]


  3. on April 7, 2015 at 9:05 pm Faculty mentoring | Memoirs of a SLACer

    […] went out of her way to ensure that I knew what was going on. Unlike mentoring undergraduates or graduate students, at the faculty level I think that successful mentoring is mostly about keeping new colleagues in […]


  4. on May 8, 2015 at 1:10 pm Mentoring at every level | Memoirs of a SLACer

    […] of the mentor while the second focuses on the perspective of the mentee (similar to my post on mentors and anti-mentors), though that can also be helpful for mentors who are trying to avoid screwing things […]


  5. on February 16, 2016 at 9:02 pm Junior faculty, get yourselves mentors! | Memoirs of a SLACer

    […] campus alerted me to the fact that mentoring has changed. Models with a single assigned mentor (or anti-mentor) are no longer preferred. Instead, everybody should have lots of mentoring relationships in which […]



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