Welcome to the Graduate Mentoring Center!
Dear Graduate Mentoring Community,
My experience at IU was made easier and more fruitful because a community of family, friends, peers, colleagues, faculty, staff, and strangers supported me during my doctoral journey. They helped me succeed by supporting who I was and empowering me to complete what I started.
How did they do this? They made sure I knew about the resources on and off campus, helped me network and publish, encouraged me when no light appeared at the end of a project, pushed me to question any tightly held assumptions about my subject, and shared with me graduate school "codes" and "languages". In addition, they offered me a good meal, a funny movie, great music, and spaces of silence and reflection when I - we - needed them.
In short, they helped me understand that balance, community, culture, mentorship, and scholarship could all be created and achieved with, quite literally, a little help from my friends and mentors. These tenets guide The Graduate Mentoring Center.
As a graduate student, you may sometimes feel isolated. You may sometimes feel that you won't ever get through "this", whatever "this" is at the moment. You may have a family you need to support while conducting your research. It may be the first time you've been on a campus so large. Or your research is not going as you had hoped. While it is true that "wherever you go, there you are", it is not true that you are the only one or need to be alone on this journey.
During turbulent times you may feel as if your research is unimportant compared to the urgent work that is needed to change the world. You may even feel like you want to put your work aside to do something more important. I want to assure you that what you are thinking and feeling is part of the process of growing into what it means for you to be a scholar.
I invite you to contemplate or visit the reasons why you decided to pursue a graduate education and how, now more than ever, that choice can help you be the change you want to be in the world. More than anything, I invite you to contemplate this with a mentor or a group of mentors who may be your peers.
If you do not yet have a mentor, or would like a new one, please do not hesitate to contact us at iugmc@indiana.edu with any questions you may have. You may also contact us via this form.
Maria Hamilton Abegunde, PhD
Director
