Two Paths, One Vision: The Journey to Becoming a Nurse with a Mentor
By Iris Tamura UA’ 26 and Jim Stellar
In our first meeting, I (JS) asked IT if she wanted to go to graduate school. I did this because, in my long experience with undergraduates (over 45 years), she is very bright. She immediately reacted by saying she wants to go to nursing school and become a nurse. My job then became to let her lead and develop her vision, not mine. It is the job of a mentor to serve the student and not the mentor’s preconceived notions. However, that depends on another attribute that I know she possesses – her high emotional intelligence (EQ). It is more than a nice demeanor and a social justice approach to people. It is a trust I have in her judgment about what she wants to do, and I think it makes me a better mentor to her.
I (IT) had a conversation with my mother at the beginning of my junior year. We were discussing my future plans, and how I didn’t have a good idea of what I wanted to do. She mentioned a one–year nursing program that I could complete after I finished my bachelor’s. She then also explained the plethora of opportunities that a nursing degree can open up. This sounded like a feasible plan that I was also excited about.
I (JS) always say that family is the first, and often the most important, mentor. So, if you have your mother, why do you need a professor as another mentor? I think the answer may be just in the fact that the professor is not in your family.
I (IT) had never had a mentor outside of my family before. Familial mentors (parents, siblings, etc.) are often biased when it comes to your life and choices. They may agree to something that they do not believe is best, because they want to see you happy. They may also have certain expectations that are maybe from an earlier period of your life, and will “mentor” you accordingly. A non-familial mentor does not have these types of expectations. When I meet with Dr. Stellar, he always tells me that I am in charge and he is just there to guide me and assist in any way he can.
Like in a good family, trust is essential to a non-family mentor/mentee relationship. It allows simple advice to transform into emotional communication and connection. For a lot of professors, mentoring is not a top priority in the busy life of their scholarship and classroom teaching, but it is for many students. Having a mentor can make all the difference in a student’s college and life experience. Mentoring provides students with guidance, emotional support, and connections that go beyond learning within a classroom. As I (JS) always say, an advisor who is also a mentor really thinks he is your pretend adopted uncle or she is your pretend adopted aunt. It is that family-like relationship that can produce inspiration … going back to the concept of trust.
As IT notes, a mentor-mentee relationship is something that has to occur naturally. Forcing a relationship like this one is unproductive for both parties. A good mentor-mentee relationship is completely voluntary and requires a large amount of trust on both parts, and cannot be created. The type of bond required to make this relationship work cannot be fabricated or forced.
As JS says, naturally combining perspectives of two different people in mentoring is a bit like how two eyes, which see slightly different views of the world, combine to make one’s vision seem like it comes from one eye in the center of the head, but it has depth. An interesting illustration of this fusion-of-views comes from a stereoscopic range-finder used in world war 1, which is like a pair of binoculars, where prisms and lenses make the two viewpoints separated by more like 2 feet instead of the inches that naturally separate the eyes. The result is enhanced depth perception that a military range finder then used to guide the gunner’s firing elevation to make shells fall on the enemy target. It requires fusion of the two eyes ’ images to achieve that depth, just like in normal two-eye vision. This fusion and enhanced depth seems to us to be parallel to IT’s and JS’s very different perspectives due to the age/gender difference that can be fused only after trust is established. It brings bring a greater depth to their planning of the student’s college career development
There is a saying from nursing that IT and JS also like – “If you do not know the name of your doctor in a hospital, you will be OK. If you do not know the name of your nurse, that is bad. Doctors, like professors, are busy with demanding professional lives based on extensive training and experience. The same is true for nurses, but their job is much more than that of a direct interface between the patient and the medical establishment. That may be why the above statement exists. In a university, academic advisors fill a role parallel to nurses, and in our experience, they are good people who try to talk to the students about their plans, like mentors. The problem is that in a typical university, the academic advisor-to-student ratio is much worse than the professor-to-student ratio. That means advisors often do not have the time to establish that connection with students. Here is where professors can step in and help. In addition, the professor, like the doctor in a hospital, is the most highly trained professional with whom the patient (or student) can interact. That gives them additional power, like being able to write a letter of recommendation, especially if they have really gotten to know the student, as often happens in mentoring. You see this with professors when they have graduate students who assist them with their scholarship, and you see it in those undergraduates who work with professors (and their graduate students) on that scholarship. But again, the problem is that with the typical medium-to-large classroom arrangement in a university, there are too many students for this mentoring relationship to develop properly. And as mentioned, mentoring can not be assigned (or rushed). It must be natural.
To return to the parallel to the hospital and IT’s future career plans, professors deliver lectures, assignments, and grades, similar to a doctor giving a diagnosis and prescribing treatment. Their roles are essential to the student or the patient, but they are often not the ones with whom they personally connect. As noted, nurses have a much more hands-on role with a patient, much like a mentor with a student. They monitor progress, adjust the plans, and provide ongoing support. Bad doctors are similar to bad professors: they don’t make time to listen and guide you. A hospital without nurses will not function, yet a university without much mentoring can and does function. Professors may be knowledgeable and able to lecture, but mentors are those who truly ensure the growth and transformation of the students.
So, how do we overcome the professor-student ratio problem? We do not have an answer for that, but that does not mean we should not discuss it and make some effort. This uncertainty is what makes the conversation surrounding professor-student mentorships even more essential.
