—from the Lab Manager's bench and the PI's desk

We know that mentoring is challenging, surprising, rewarding, & so much more. On Twitter, we often use #ProudMentor or #ProudPI to retweet when a mentor tags us in a tweets about the undergrad members of their research team.

If you want to share a few words on why you mentor, the impact it's made on you, or other thoughts were listening. And we’d like to share it with others, too.

Our goals for creating the Mentoring Matters series are straightforward.

1. We want to show undergrad researchers that mentors are "real people" and not wholly mysterious creatures.

2. We want to reassure newer mentors that no one is born knowing how to do this and often even the most incredible mentors (those who make it seem so easy) worked hard to develop their mentoring philosophy, approach, and skill set. And, yes, even made a few mistakes along the way.

3. We think mentoring is a big deal but the importance of it is sometimes overlooked.Plus, the impact a true mentoring relationship can make on both the mentee (and the mentor) receives less attention than it deserves. We can't change that everywhere, but we can make some difference here, on social media, and our expanded platform.

So if you’re mentoring an undergrad in the lab (or the field or clinic), and you want to share your experience, we want to hear from you. We invite researchers at all career and experience levels to participate.Whether this is your first semester mentoring someone or you’ve been around the bench a while, we want to share your perspectives, experiences, and lessons as widely as possible.

Answer the questions that you connect with, ignore the others, or ask and answer the questions you wish we would have asked. Click here to be featured.