Welcome to the Graduate Mentoring Center!
Dear Graduate Students,
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.
This is an invitation to you to visit us, attend our programs, drop by to have tea: tell us what is on your mind, what you need or want, and what you'd like to do with us to make this journey, challenging as it may be, a sustainable and successful one.
I look forward to meeting more of you during the year. Check out our calendar to find a speaker, meditation session, research workshop, or community gathering to learn something new or to get together with colleagues and peers.
Have a wonderful, productive, and successful semester.
