Being mentors to curious minds is one of the most challenging, crucial, and influential roles we, as academics, have. During my time in graduate school, I have mentored three undergraduate students from different backgrounds and with varying exposure to research. These students’ interests and previous experiences ranged, meaning that how I explained certain concepts or the feedback I needed to provide did as well. For example, my first mentor experience was through a program at my graduate school focused on providing research opportunities to undergraduates from universities that may not have them otherwise. Though the student had clear interests, I was more involved with helping them turn an idea into an empirical question, and then the empirical question into a study design. Meanwhile, the other two students I mentored had previously been research assistants and thus were more familiar with the research process. As such, my support for one of these students focused on helping narrow down their vast ideas to a more succinct testable question to e anssure that they could still pursue their interests without engaging in an overly complicated first project. For the other, my efforts focused on aiding them in understanding how statistics connected to their questions and editing their writing to communicate the thoughtfulness behind their hypotheses, study design, and interpretation of their findings. To some extent, mentorship means being a chameleon, and shifting to fit what will best serve the mentee’s current hopes and needs.

From my own wonderful experiences with being mentored, as well as the three undergraduate theses students that I have mentored, I have determined three primary lenses through which I plan to mentor graduate and undergraduate students alike. First, I will practice the balancing act of encouraging students to pursue their research interests while keeping in mind their current skillset. Early research experiences can be formative in an individual’s self-efficacy and projects that are too far beyond someone’s current knowledge could be discouraging rather than skill-building. However, one of the goals of primary education is to learn, grow, and overcome new challenges, so Second, as a student and I work more together, I will give space for more freedom in interests and the writing process while always being available to provide feedback. This choice should support the natural building of independence to set them up for a career in research. Third, I will teach my students open science practices, helping them develop their ideas through pre-registering data collection plans, hypotheses, and analytic plans as well as embracing transparent open materials and code sharing practices. This decision creates a structured environment to engage in the research process while also developing a value system that promotes better science. I want to support budding researchers to feel capable and to practice open, transparent, and rigorous science, while maintaining a work-life balance that does not sacrifice the scientist for the science.