How I got a mentor and then got into a research lab
By Talia Ballard UA’28 and Jim Stellar
First, I (TB) connected with JS and we developed a mentoring relationship. … Hello Talia, Hello back.
As winter break is progressing I’ve had time to reflect. There are a few things about a mentor that I can’t help but be so appreciative of. First and foremost, I’d like to explain how I landed my job as a mentee (that’s the correct terminology, right?). As someone who is looking forward to going to graduate school at UAlbany, and after doing some research on the programs, I came to find out that gaining research experience as an undergraduate is essential in order to prove that you are qualified for a PhD program. Of course there are other factors that make a great application, but research seems to be the “ticket” in. Not to mention, research is something I genuinely want to do so it just makes sense for me.
I found Jim Stellar under the faculty page on the UAlbany website under Behavioral Neuroscience. After reviewing his CV, I sent him an email expressing my interest in his work. He responded and let me know that what I was looking at was outdated and that he no longer focuses on what I read. He sent me some of his current works and after reviewing those I sent another email. To my surprise, he said my email was “unusually professional” or something along those lines. From there, we met via zoom, then in the preceding weeks we met in person at his office. During these meetings we worked towards getting me into a lab. We were successful! I will explain that more in detail in our next blog.
Back to the topic of being mentored. I enquired Jim with hopes of joining him in a lab and came to find out that he didn’t have one. Although, he did say if he did have one, he definitely would have liked to have me in it, which I can’t help but be happy about. Instead, he offered me his mentorship and of course I accepted. What I noticed about having a mentor is that this is something I needed without even knowing. This reminds me of the saying “Sometimes you shoot for the moon and land upon the stars”, and in my case, the stars are just as good. What is nice about our collaboration, myself and Jim, is that we don’t have any set due dates. Take this blog for example, it was written in no rush. Secondly, we can work together for as long as we’d like, maybe even lifelong patterns, who knows! The mentor and mentee relationship doesn’t end with the semester. For example, I am writing this now on break. Having a mentor provides an extra layer of comfort. Especially for someone like myself who carries an extreme amount of self doubt, I constantly remind myself, “Well, Jim believes in me and I respect him so I have no choice but to respect what he thinks, even if it’s about me.”
Now it is my (JS) turn to write about having a mentee. While I have done this before, I have to say that each time it is very interesting in terms of two properties: learning, and the joy of connection. About learning, I often say that in vision we have two eyes that see the scene in a slightly different view of the world. Just try closing one eye and then the other and you can see those small differences. Yet that is not your experience. You see the world as one view but you see it in depth. True there are other depth cues, such as interposition or a familiar object being smaller if farther away, but no one really confuses this depth with the powerful depth perception one gets from two eyes. So working with Talia gives me as a professor the chance to see in better depth what it is like to have a college career today when the world is so different from what it was when I was her age. However, to do that, we have to first develop a trust relationship between us so we can fuse our two “views” of the world, just as the two eyes automatically fuse their two views. The joy of connection is much simpler. It is just enjoyable to have a near familial relationship with one’s students and sometimes I even say that I feel like your pretend-adopted-crazy-uncle-Jim. Who does not feel joy from such a familial connection? I am also looking forward to our next blog on her lab work that we both hope will lead to her continued professional development.
