In all my years as a post-doc, I’ve had the pleasure of working closely with a number of students. There have been a few to whom I have been more of a mentor than to others, and in the last year both of them have successfully defended their theses. They also happen to have the same first name – Luke – so I have taken to referring to them as “my two Lukes”.
This past week, the second of them had their thesis defense. It went very well, and while I wasn’t able to be present for the thesis defense of the first Luke I took advantage of my geographic proximity to go to the defense of the second. I was also very humbled by the fact that he thanked me in his defense talk.
Mentoring is something that is very important to me. To be a scientist and not mentor students seems utterly pointless to me. I’ve taken great pleasure in having many opportunities to engage with students in leading research. The rewards so far have been vast, and as I think about what it will be like to have my own students – as terrifying as that seems now – I know that it will be as comfortable as breathing.
