Pick A Little, Take A Little

You know what's been on my mind lately? Baked goods. Lots of them. I think it's the weather. Nothing sounds better to me than cakey, doughy sweet goodness for breakfast, lunch and dinner. To get my mind off of said baked goods, I've also been thinking about mentors: being a mentor, finding mentors, having secret mentors, having no mentors but wishing you did. Yes, all of these things. Let me tell you about my experience and you can think about yours.

I recently volunteered to be a faculty mentor to one of the pediatric interns. We met for lunch and were given a list of 'helpful topics' to discuss. Talk about awkward! It felt more like a job interview at first with me looking down at my paper and saying "Let's see. How are you handling stress and what makes up your support system?". Let's just say I recognized the awkwardness and nimbly manuevered away from its impending destruction of our mentor-mentee relationship. Once we put down the 'helpful topics' and starting really talking with each other I realized that there was so much about her that I recognized in myself and it was comforting. I felt like I really had some worthwhile experiences to share with her. And the best part? She has done some things that I totally admire and I felt like I learned from her. That, my friends, is what makes the best mentoring relationships...learning from each other.

As a young faculty member I am charged with creating a mentorship committee for myself made up of senior pediatric faculty who have experiences and goals that align with my own and who will guide me down the road to promotion. I have spent hours researching who would be good people to have on my committee. I'm at the point where I've narrowed it down but have to actually ask them. The problem is that I don't know one of them yet. I've read her CV and she has been recommended to me by multiple coworkers but we have not had occasion to meet each other yet. So then it becomes like a blind date...I'll email her and tell her a little about me and suggest we go for coffee and then she can decide whether or not she likes me enough to spend the next 7 years answering my panicked phone calls for advice and pleading my case to the administration to promote me to the next level. Ugh. Yes, I know. Time to grow up and just do it.

I have a secret mentor too. Although I'm not sure I can call this a true mentor relationship because she doesn't know I exist. I don't provide any benefit to her whatsoever. She happens to be a peds hospitalist who is active in the Section on Hospital Medicine and posts frequently on the listserv to which I subscribe. She is brilliant and funny and thoughtful and has the same educational values that I do and sees through all the smokescreens to really get at the heart of what pediatric patients need. I save her posts to the listserv and read them multiple times. On second thought, maybe I am less of a mentee and more of a creepy stalker chick. Either way, she is an excellent role model for me.

Lastly, I have been in a place where I could not for the life of me find a mentor. I was surrounded by people who did not share the same values and style and vision that I did. I did not feel valued as a person or as a peer. More importantly, I did not feel known. Now, I recognize that I played my own role in this failure of mentorship but the bottom line is that I was not meant to be there and it was not the right arena for me to advance and achieve my goals. So I left that place and it was the hardest thing I've ever done but I am so much happier for it.

As professionals, we can't underestimate the power of having mentors. Take stock of your surroundings and find people who support the different pieces of who you are. You have to invest time in a lot of different people in order to find the ones who will change your life. Sort of like dating isn't it?