Jeff Mielke

It’s good to have a mentor. If it’s not someone who already works where you work, it’s great if they can show up in your city during their sabbatical, especially when you’re a few years into your first tenure-track job and feeling particularly lost. It’s nice, but not necessary, if it’s someone who used to live in your area and there are local legends about them commuting to work on ice skates in the winter and by wading across the river in the summer. It’s great if they can attend your lab meetings and meet with you individually to talk about how to handle the job and balance your responsibilities, and if one of those meetings involves going to a ski shop so that you can buy skis. And then it’s great if they keep taking you cross-country skiing in Gatineau Park with their family and having you over for dinner. It’s also great if they have a spouse who is a good influence too and ends up as your wedding photographer a few years later after you get your life together but in the meantime shares their lunch with you if there aren’t any vegetarian options at the lunch stop when you all go whitewater rafting in the snow in southwestern Quebec and you aren’t sure exactly where you are because you broke your glasses the first time the raft flipped over and lost them the second time the raft flipped over. It’s nice if your mentor has such a positive attitude and is such a calming influence that many years later, when you’re frustrated by someone at work or elsewhere and deciding how to react, you still routinely ask yourself “what would Doug Pulleyblank do here?”