by Juliane
BUMC has started a mentoring program for postdocs. As part of this mentoring effort, Joanne Kamens, executive director of Addgene, gave a very interesting talk about how to be a good mentee. It is a lot of work; to get the best out of a mentoring relationship the mentee has to be proactive and very organized and should know what they want. Unfortunately this is the hardest part for me, because I really don’t know what I want to do when I grow-up.
If you are similar to me, here are two ways to help making this decision easier: myIDP and forced choice analysis. Both of these methods help to identify the things you don’t want to do and by default the perfect career should be left. That’s the theory.
Joanne also explains this on her blog, which is a great read and includes a link to her ebook about mentoring. Check it out!