I’m running a little behind on my Q&As, so here’s a good one:
Yes. I had a mentor in my first couple of years on the tenure track. It’s Jonathan, a longtime reader of this blog. He was so helpful. He worked with me on my first book. I had no idea how to make it good enough to publish, and he gave extremely useful suggestions. I had to rewrite parts of it completely. It got a prize from a scholarly organization as their book of the year, so it worked. I still have a two-page list of his foundational principles of academic success that I reread for inspiration every time my enthusiasm dips.
Of course, Jonathan isn’t some random coach. He’s an extremely successful academic who even back then was already widely published and recognized. It was actually really funny how I met him. I came across his blog that he ran under his own name, and I thought it was some academic follower of his and not Jonathan himself.
Such memories this great question brings.
But make sure you don’t go for some individual who couldn’t hack it in academia and is now trying to be a coach in a pursuit at which he failed. Get the person’s CV and ask yourself if that’s the record of publications you want to have at their rank.
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