Joseph R.

Martin
@01381772

Practicum Exercise #8
Understanding Your Advising Relationships: The Mentorship Exercise
Refer to appropriate Briller chapter and exercise for detailed instructions. Follow the template
to organize your response.

TYPE responses.
UPLOAD one copy to BBLearn; bring a hard or e-copy to class to workshop.
SAVE an e-copy. You will be turning in a revised copy as part of your Final
Project.

Part I Answer the following questions in complete sentences.

What should a mentor do for you?

A mentor should be able to teach you everything that you need to know about your craft or
study, without necessarily having to explicitly state those details. They should be able to
teach through experience. Though the relationship involved with a mentor is meant to be a
more interpersonal relationship than between someone and an advisor, and the mentor
should be an expert in what they do as opposed to just a general font of information.

What personal characteristics do you want in a mentor, and why?

Someone who is approachable, but also a known expert in their field would be the main two
things I would look for in a mentor.

What professional connections would this person have that could help you in your training for a
career in applied anthropology or for job-hunting?
This person would have professional connections in both the academic and the standard
work force world that would provide the person that they are mentoring with the necessary
experience to establish themselves in either field should live lead them that way.

Describe the relationship you would like to have (formal/informal, professional/personal,

frequent/infrequent, means of communication, etc.), and explain why.
While some people enjoy whats essentially a friendship with their mentors after a certain
extent, that aspect never really felt incredibly important to me. Naturally, thinking well of
each other is incredibly important, but for the sake of results I believe that I would almost
prefer the formal and professional standard for mentorship.

What will you and your mentor do together or talk about?

Joseph R. Martin
@01381772
I dont entirely understand the context of this question, but for the sake of providing an
answer, I assume that we would talk about topics related to whatever field of study I am in
at that point.

Identify the current people in your life that can provide helpful - if there isnt someone like this in
your life, identify where or how you could possibly find them:
a) academic advice
b) career advice
c) intellectual guidance
d) personal encouragement
e) ethical advice
I do no currently have anyone that I could trust with these currently in my life, but I
suppose that there would be somewhere even on campus wherein I could find someone with
these traits. My family group is relatively small, and friend relations are all basically in the
same situation that I have found myself in currently.

Part II. Create a meaningful personal definition of mentorship, specifying how s/he would help
you, and define who you imagine your mentor could be by drawing upon all of these points.
A mentorship would be someone who teaches me to continue on the level of work that they
are performing, even if it means that Im doing it in my own way, with my own intentions
somewhere else down the line.

Part III. Answer one of the following questions, depending on which applies to you:
If you have a mentor already, how could you improve your relationship so that it meets your
definition above and the expectations you put forth in Part I?

If you do not have a mentor, what specific strategies (at least 3) could you utilize to help locate
that mentor?
-Network and begin asking around for professionals open to mentoring in my field of study.
-Promote myself and any works in the best way possible in order to catch the interest of
potential mentors.
-Create a repertoire with people I already know that qualify for any of these things and
propose a mentorship through those means.