ScholarX — Of First Meetings and Future Plans
Hello again everyone, and welcome to the 2nd installment of this article series about my journey as a ScholarX mentee. In my last article, I told you, all about ScholarX and how I ended up applying and getting selected for the program. If you are new to all this and have no idea what I’m talking about, I do recommend giving that article, which you can find here, a quick read-through, but if not, let’s dive right in!
The Art of Communication
During the kick-off session, we’d had previously, one of the main points the speakers highlighted was how to communicate with our mentors. Initially, the mentors would reach out to us to set up a meeting (usually via email), but from that point on it was up to us to keep the communication going. Here are a few things you should be ready to ask or answer in that very first email.
1. The date and time of the meeting
2. What medium you are going to use (Zoom, Google Meets, and Skype, etc. Your mentor will most probably be living outside of Sri Lanka, so you would be using online communication methods even without a global pandemic forcing everyone to stay put inside their houses)
3. Any extra information he/she needs from you (My mentor asked me for my CV and some other personal information)
4. What language you will be communicating in (English, Sinhala, or Tamil, this really depends on the mentor though)
Another thing that the speakers specifically mentioned, was that each mentor has their own style of communication. Some of them prefer to use emails while others try to organize as many discussions as they can. Some mentors may be more hands-on while others leave you a bit more to your own devices while they guide you from the sidelines, but as I’ve said before, ScholarX is all about you and it’s up to you to make the best use of this experience. In my case, my mentor uses a combination of emails and meetings to keep things going, so our initial communication was via email and we used that to set up our very first meeting.
Oh and one more thing! It’s always good to be prepared with a set of questions you want to ask your mentor during the meeting. That way you can get the best use out of your meeting time and make the whole experience a lot more productive for yourself. Of course, as the meeting progresses you might have new questions or the direction of your discussion might change so you might not get to ask everything you’ve listed out, but it won’t hurt to be ready.
The Meeting
Alright, so last time I mentioned that I got into ScholarX thanks to the timely intervention of a good friend. Well, that said friend and I ended up being assigned the same mentor (weird coincidence , I know!), Mr. Ishan Karunanayake, a Ph.D. candidate from the University of New South Wales, Australia, along with 3 others and we all had our first online meeting together a few weeks into the program. Up until then, we had only communicated via email and we hadn’t had much interaction with the other mentees either so this was a great opportunity to finally meet everyone, even if it was virtually.
So there we were, 1 mentor, 5 mentees, and like any good first meeting between strangers, we kicked it off with the introductions. Now, I’ve said before that ScholarX caters to a very diverse group of candidates, and looking at my fellow mentees it couldn’t be truer. We were all of different ages and backgrounds and had very different goals. Some were looking for internship opportunities at the time and wanted help finding international placements. Another was looking into entrepreneurship and initiating a startup. And then there were those like me, soon-to-be graduates looking to take the next step in life. Our mentor listened to each of us in turn and then scheduled individual meetings to discuss our aspirations and what each of us hoped to get out of the program.
Remember how I said it was good to have some questions ready for your mentor? Well, this was where I needed those. This meeting was more about understanding each other and building up a rapport that we could rely on to solidify the direction of the mentorship. In my case, I found out that my mentor and I had shared a lot of similar experiences, so it was very easy for us to come to an understanding about each other and he was able to give me some good advice from the very first session itself.
My mentor mostly spoke about his experiences in applying for post-graduate studies and what I should and shouldn’t do as preparation for that. He gave me quite a few useful tips at that first discussion, and to be honest, I’m still collecting pointers from him at every meeting. Even though some of that advice was tailored to my specific situation, I think a lot of people might benefit from this information, so I will be compiling everything I’ve found out about post-graduate study application into a separate article in the future.
Tangible Goals
Back to ScholarX, one of the other major points of focus for us during that meeting was the tangible output we would bring out of the ScholarX program. Now, this output was supposed to be different for each mentee, and generally speaking it had to be something that showcased how we had worked towards our personal goals during the program. Here are a few examples of possible tangible outputs that our mentor mentioned.
1. A research paper/publication (This is a good output for people like me who are trying to get into post-graduate studies)
2. The incorporation of your start-up (For entrepreneurs)
3. The completion of a part/module of a project you are working on (This is mostly for students who requested help on their academic or personal projects)
4. The completion of relevant courses/certifications (This is if you are looking at professional development or expanding your tech stack)
A tangible output isn’t a mandatory part of the ScholarX program, but as you can probably see for yourselves, completing these goals could be extremely valuable to us down the line. If you haven’t guessed already, my tangible goal for ScholarX is to write a research paper with my mentor and our next few meetings were more about setting the stage for that. I’ll share how that went down in my next article.
Alright, I know I’ve said a lot today, so I think this might be a good place to stop before I give you guys an overload. Let’s go for a quick recap before we wind up.
1. Mentors will reach out to mentees to set up the initial meeting.
2. Communication is key, and it is the mentee’s job to keep their connection going after the initial meeting.
3. Different mentors follow different styles of mentorships and communication.
4. Mentees can have a tangible goal that they hope to achieve by the end of the program.
5. A tangible goal is not mandatory but can be very helpful depending on what you hope to achieve from the ScholarX program.
And it’s a wrap! I’ll see you all next time with a closer look at preparing and planning for tangible goals, so be sure to stick around!
