This week, Deans Cheryl Healton, Ana Abraído-Lanza and Julie Aviná gathered to share their wisdom with GPH students on the importance of mentoring. Over the course of an hour they shared their personal experiences with mentoring, and encouraged students to seek out multiple mentors at various times throughout their careers who can both guide and challenge.
Dean Healton advised, for example, to have mentors for our academic goals, our career goals, and our work-life balance. One mentor taught her to manage the demands of the day -- it’s never easy! -- by using the visual of a clock face or a pie. We decide on the size of each “slice of time” depending on what’s necessary at any given moment.
Pictured Left to Right: Deans Cheryl Healton, Julie Avina, and Ana Abraído-Lanzá
The purpose of a mentor is to guide us as well as listen and serve as a sounding board, to challenge and motivate in a transformative process. Mentors can be people we admire and want to emulate. They empower you to follow your own path in directions you may never have thought possible.
Counterintuitively, mentors can sometimes seem like tormentors. There are some people who, at inopportune moments, poke us in our side instead of pat us on the back. But their influence can sometimes prove to be a powerful motivator to work harder, reach further, and achieve more -- just to prove that we can.
If you’re looking for a mentor here at GPH, speak with your faculty advisor or program advisor, or schedule a meeting with a member of the faculty who inspires you most for guidance on how to connect with the right mentor.
We all want to thrive, be productive and be happy, and we do it better together. Tap into the network around you and you may be surprised how close you are to connecting with your mentor. After all, we’re works in progress, but we can all use guidance on what we hope to achieve and how to get there!