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>> Susan Lepri: Sometimes mentors are assigned to you and sometimes that works out well. Other
times it's really helpful to kind of get to know some people that maybe are in positions
that you're interested in pursuing or they're just people that seem to connect with you.
>> Thomas Zurbuchen: Look for individuals that you can have an alignment of spirits of kind so that
really understand who you are over time but also can help you in the domain that you seek input.
>> Caroline Hirth: At Michigan there's a ton of resources to get started. There's
a lot of different seminar classes that you can take where they'll
bring in alums as like a guest speaker and you can connect with them after.
>> Lennard Fisk: One of the things that good professors do with their students
is they take them to meetings, they expose them to the community as a whole
and encourages them to make friends.
>> Dipro Prattoy: Being an international student it takes me almost 30 hours to go back to my
country in Bangladesh so I really feel that a lot of international students who come here feel
that loneliness for the first couple of weeks at least and for those International students
I tell you definitely join a lot of clubs look out for your seniors and befriend them. Ask them
questions ask them a lot of resource ideas and they're definitely going to help you.
>> Thomas: In many cases a mentor will in fact be in your field especially if
the mentorship you seek is in that field because you want the mentor
to have specific expertise and networks in the field that of interest for you.
>> Susan: But it's also helpful to explore mentorship outside of that. It's often that
you kind of have a conversation with someone outside your field and they'll say something
that will really resonate with you or give you a new perspective of how to think about something.
>> Dipro: One of my mentors was an aerospace engineer whereas I was pursuing computer
science and through that conversation I realized that computer science is
a field so vast that it's equally as beneficial as being a software
engineer in an aerospace company as it is in working in a tech company.
>> Thomas: What really makes them special and mentors are is
that they care about you and help lift you and empower you in that community.
>> Susan: So you want to look for somebody that you connect with because when you have
kind of that more familiar relationship it really allows more honest advice to flow.
>> Emily Eitzman: I want to make sure that they're passionate about what I
want to be mentored for so that they'll really be invested and
mentoring me won't be a chore it'll be something that they really want to do.
>> Caroline: I think it's important to have someone who will be truthful with you and sort of
help guide you and tell you what you need to know as opposed to telling you what you want to hear.
>> Dipro: At the end of the day we are looking for mentors so that we can become
a better version of ourselves and the only way we can do that is if someone takes their time
and they are brutally honest with what we do. This specific person that I'm talking
about he specifically always told me this is right and this is wrong and
and it's because of his resources I got my first internship here at the U of M.
>> Thomas: What you want in a mentor is really that long lasting kind of engagement and
trust that that grows towards something most magical in your life somebody who
really is an advocate and at the same time also gives you hard news from time to time
where you need to learn something that perhaps you didn't even know.
>> Nosa Edoimioya: Thinking about a friend who was graduating from his PhD as I was starting my
PhD and so this mentorship was someone who was a little bit ahead of me in terms of my career
and he was able to shed a lot of light on what kind of things he did during his PhD that helped
him kind of advance to the position that he was at that at that point. As a friend he was also
there to just kind of help me navigate some of the emotional and kind of just hard times of life and
so having both those professional and personal advice and help was really helpful for me.
>> Lennard: I was lucky I had people who cared about me in my career and I learned from them.
They saw something in me and they brought it out. They interested me in something
that I didn't even know I was likely to be interested in and so if you're lucky
you put yourself in some circumstances where people care for you and help you.
>> Nosa: Start doing the thing that you want to do. There's a reason why you might want to reach
out to someone to be a mentor and that might be to sort of help you understand how to get
to a certain place or how to do a certain thing. Starting to do the things that you already want
to do before you reach out to your mentor kind of creates an opportunity for them to
invest into what you're doing and learn about what you're doing and give you some advice.
>> Caroline: Really go back to using your connections at the University.
You have lots of people around you, you have your peers you have student
instructors your professors and then your alumni.
>> Emily: With all the things I'm involved in I just ask people do you know anyone who knows
anything about this and like they might not know themselves but they will know someone.
>> Susan: You can ask to be connected because sometimes if you try to connect with somebody
who doesn't know you it's more helpful to have somebody who knows them introduce you.
>> Thomas: You may want to open up your heart to mentorship. Being a mentee
also has to do with vulnerability having the the courage to talk about worries you have.
Sometimes in my case talk about worries whether I'm good enough or something.
Really ask yourself how you can get yourself to open up more and yes it does take courage but
frankly it is the door that opens do many things that only mentorship can give you.
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