How to Work With a Mentor

Over the past couple of weeks, I have had a couple meetings with my mentor and set out to finish my research for my original work project. Following the winter storms, I’ve been determined to conduct regular meetings with my mentor and regularly continue research, as I felt that I had missed so much time due to technical difficulties arising from the storm. The most important progress I’ve made recently has been with my mentor.

My mentor and I typically meet once a week, but recently, I’ve been scheduling meetings almost every week to have a quick discussion over my progress and questions I have. One of the most valuable aspects of my mentorship is the ability to discuss articles and journals that I have found online. My reading and knowledge level does not give me the ability to understand every article I come across completely, so it’s helpful to have a mentor who can comprehend more difficult pieces and help me break them down. For instance, I found a journal on mass timber that definitely had a lot of great information, but it was so long and I could barely comprehend any of it, so I met with my mentor and asked him if he could look over it for me and break it down. My mentor offered to send me notes on the journal and go over it with me, for which I am grateful. In future meetings, I hope to have more articles or parts of articles that I can discuss with my mentor and gain knowledge from. My goals for my mentorship are to continue to schedule regular meetings and continue to ask questions and have discussions.

One small setback that I have encountered concerns both my mentor and my research. I had been hoping to participate in a tour of an engineered wood or other material production facility to increase my knowledge and understanding of civil engineering practices, and my mentor mentioned that he had contacts he could ask about giving such a tour. However, as my mentor updated me, due to the pandemic, these tours would not be safe. I completely understand and respect this decision, and all this means for me is that I will have to complete my research online.

I also discuss my original work progress with my mentor. After researching wood trends, concrete, and steel, my next topic of interest, and the topic I am researching now, is transportation and construction practices. Over the past few months, I’ve researched environmental and economic trends in civil engineering and how sustainability can be achieved in construction, concerning specific materials. Now that I have conducted research on materials, I hope to consider the usage of these materials and how construction sites and transportation crews are working to decrease their negative environmental effects. My goal for the next week is to continue my research into this topic.

Overall, my original work and mentorship are going according to plan, and I’m happy with the progress I have made and am continuing to make. I hope to stay on track with my mentor meetings and original work research - soon enough, I’ll be starting on writing my final report, and I’m highly anticipating that.