Reflective Essay On My Mentor

Improved Essays
My mentors during undergraduate and professional training taught me that learning is a process of personal growth. As a teacher and mentor at the University of North Carolina, I have come to appreciate the profound impact that my own teachers and mentors had on this process. It is now clear to me that I succeeded most when my teachers developed an interactive, safe, and intellectually stimulating mentoring environment. By allowing me to ask questions and attempt to answer those questions myself, they pushed me to flourish as a student, understand the process of learning, and develop as a person. I now try to stimulate my trainees in the same fashion, urging them to identify the basic questions they have and to engage in the pursuit of answers …show more content…
In contrast to the scientific method, the process of science is non-linear and iterative in nature. Science circles back on itself; useful ideas lay the foundation for the construction of a deeper and deeper understanding of the original question. The process of science is also not predetermined. At any given point, the process can lead to many different next steps. Thus, trainees must embrace the dynamic nature of the process in order to succeed. My goal is to help trainees develop an attitude of inquiry, which is necessary to embrace the scientific process. By encouraging trainees to question, I try to nurture fruitful discussion that can lead them down different avenues of the scientific process. It also brings misconceptions that may impede the process to the forefront, where they can be addressed head-on. Nurturing this type of inquisitive nature is the critical component of the process of learning. I encourage trainees to think independently without fear of failure, as failure itself can open up new opportunities. I also encourage mentees to take ownership of their work and projects. I encourage them to see them from conception to IRB submission to implementation to analysis and through to publication. In this process I act as their guide and am ever present, but I insist that the drive the project forward …show more content…
Receiving the honor, which is only bestowed to 4 faculty members each year from across the entire University campus, is one of the personnel highlights of my career so far. My development as a mentor has been an enlightening personal journey. As a mentor and instructor, I consider myself a work in progress and the professional development allowed in the K24 will only go to enhance the skills that I have begun to develop. I find myself reflecting continuously on what is working and what needs work. In this process, I try to act as a role model for my mentees, by embracing these philosophies myself and showing them how to manage the disparate sources information, time constraints and communication styles inherent in academic medicine. By fostering an environment of individualized learning and emphasizing the importance of the learning process, I try to ensure success for my students and trainees. I am a teacher, a mentor, and a researcher, in large part, due to my own mentors’ investment in my personal growth. I aim to stimulate the same growth in my students and

Related Documents

  • Improved Essays

    As I work with my mentee, I need to continuously encouraging their independence as this is a necessary skill set for their professional development. I try to help my mentees navigate professional culture by encouraging attendance at meetings, helping them network, and by building confidence. I will strive to be an approachable confidant for the mentee. It is important for a mentor to realize that this process should be about the mentee, and helping him or her identify professional goals, whatever they may be. Being a mentor is not always easy.…

    • 487 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Great Essays

    There I was, a young boy, waiting with my family in the hospital and the Surgical Assistant was taking care of my younger brother’s infected pre-auricular sinus. Ignorantly, I asked why he didn’t cut it open to relieve the pain quickly. The assistant replied, “That is the job of the surgeon.” I was fortunate enough to be allowed on to the surgical observation deck and was enthralled by what I saw.…

    • 768 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Great Essays
  • Improved Essays

    My junior year in high school, I became a student mentor in our campus’s peer counseling program. This was an incredibly rewarding experience as I had the opportunity to help freshman students assimilate into our high school dynamic. As a peer mentor, I assisted students with personal problems and mediated issues with teachers in order to maximize their learning experience. I also acted as a role model for my mentees by talking frequently about AP and Honors courses and how to be successful in such programs. I put effort into learning about each individual's interests and goals so that I could expose them to clubs and academic courses that they may appreciate such as the Biomedical Academy or our school’s robotics team.…

    • 438 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    There are some challenges to hands on and cross-curricular learning, within our activity we came across some areas that could have been developed, Hayes (2010) argues that hands on learning its heavily resourced. We agreed with this as the amount of resources we had available were limited. We also didn’t ensure we had planned for a child with a medical need, and therefore had to re arrange the activity a quarter of the way through the lesson to ensure she could join in. One key area that we identified was that children became more involved with the way the house looked in a creative sense, rather than the scientific reasoning. This challenge is also identified by Jarvis (2009) who expresses that one of the risks to cross-curricular learning is that one subject takes over in response to children’s enthusiasm and interest, this is of a loss to the other subject.…

    • 872 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Personal Reflective Essay

    • 718 Words
    • 3 Pages

    When it comes to understanding yourself and your personality on a deeper level than normally, you must take personal stories into perspective that have shaped your life while growing up. According to McAdams, “defining oneself through a personal story is an act of psychological and social responsibility” (Engler 2009). Psychological and social responsibility relate to how you act onto actions around you and how you tie society into your viewpoint of the world. In other words, explaining yourself through a story can show several things such as how your emotions played an affect, the type of response you displayed to something that happened, and as well as the lessons you learned through a personal but also social aspect. In addition, McAdams…

    • 718 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    NCLEX Nursing Curriculum

    • 709 Words
    • 3 Pages

    Expected outcomes from this project Nursing program for BSN graduates applied curriculum that will prepare students for successful passing of NCLEX. Academic, behavioral and social variables contribute to students capability to succeed in the program. There are a lot of components that effect ability of students to pass nursing license exam, such as feeling stressed, lack of academic preparation, financial problems, and difficulty with institutional politics (Newton, 2007). Correspondingly, there are numerous of studies trying to identified predictors and interventions associated with success in nursing program. One of the requirements is a grade point average (GPA) in nursing was the most frequent predictor of student success.…

    • 709 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The one time I was able to help someone is when I mentor a student at a local elementary school. When I am with the student, I am helping her out but in reality she’s helping me out so much more. I've done the mentoring program now for around five years. For the past four years I've had the same student and we have grown very close. She is from Hawaii, so she did not know very many people when she moved here.…

    • 578 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    My Mentor Experience

    • 306 Words
    • 2 Pages

    While working as a tutor at Kumon, I had the opportunity to interact with students from a wide array of educational backgrounds. Working with children not only broadened my ability to teach and communicate with others, but also helped me relate and empathize with them as their mentor. Working as a tutor helped develop my self-confidence, as I felt that I was making a difference in the academic lives of the students that I interacted with. In the same way that I view my lab mentor, Patricia G. Cipriani, as a figure of guidance, the students that I worked with viewed me as a figure of support whenever they needed help. Being the tutor, rather than the student, helped me develop perspectives on the role a mentor, or teacher, plays in a student's career.…

    • 306 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Essay On Mentoring

    • 749 Words
    • 3 Pages

    My project will be based around my future career path of becoming an academic director for athletics. Working with student- athletes is a rewarding task for you are helping mentor them at making decisions for their future after college sports. Therefore, my leadership program will be based on formal mentoring. To me formal mentoring is preparing the mentee for the future by providing advice, guidance and support. My program will consist of a team of properly trained student-athlete alumni as mentors.…

    • 749 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Mentor essay For my mentor essay I chose Daniel cloud Campos. My reason for choosing him is because he has written and directed some of my favorite music videos. I hope to do a majority of my work with music videos because music is a second passion of mine. Campos is very small time so finding info on him personally has proven a difficult task.…

    • 1485 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The most satisfaction I have had in life started with helping out my family in little acts of service, talking to them, and listening when they went through a hard time. This continued into school, in my religious life, the workplace, and my mission. I can explain more about things that helped me in a later essay. I have been looking around for opportunities to be directly involved in helping others, and I believe I found it in being a sports camps counselor. Not only is that, but the opportunity to help others learn and develop in their adolescent years something that I enjoy.…

    • 567 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    There are a few different reasons I feel I am qualified to fulfill a CA position; I have experience both in being mentored as well as mentoring. I have worked as a functional member of a team environment in my highschool, social, and work space environments. I have faced struggles that give me a calm head in hard times and that is one of my major qualifications when becoming a CA. Throughout my middle school years I was in a program with Colby College where a student attending there would come and talk with me, or play games, or whatever they saw as necessary. I was an extremely shy child who showed little to no interest in socializing with my peers; giving me a mentor for three years was how they looked to solve this problem.…

    • 570 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Decent Essays

    Mentor Reflection

    • 211 Words
    • 1 Pages

    On Wednesday, October 7 at 3p.m., I met with my advisor; Summer Balcer to discuss my future college career plans. We discussed which courses would be best for me to take next semester and then put them into my planner on my account. I also decided during this meeting to take US history 1302 over the winter mini session. In addition to the winter mini session, I also am planning on taking Math 1314 during the first summer session and then possibly Government 2306 for the second summer session. I decided to take my math class over the summer because I tend to do better in my math classes when I only have to focus on that class.…

    • 211 Words
    • 1 Pages
    Decent Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Mentor Reflective Essay

    • 1154 Words
    • 5 Pages

    This semester I learned many techniques and lessons regarding how to become a better mentor. Some of the major lessons I learned were related to how I communicated and led others. I learned that I am a leader in the exploration stage and a considerate communicator. Learning these facts about myself help me cater my style of communicating to different mentees and how to recognize how other people see me in the leadership role of mentor. Learning how to find out about how you communicate and about the leadership model in class gave me tools to work on myself as well as tools for me to pass on to my mentees.…

    • 1154 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    My project began as a way for me to give back to the community in a way in which I could use my strengths to inspire and teach. Some of the reasons why I began my journey here at J. K. Lee were to become more assertive, responsible, disciplined, and self-confident. These were qualities that held me back from reaching my full potential. I wanted to incorporate these skills into my project and challenge myself in new and different directions.…

    • 730 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays