I have a lot of thoughts about that, but because so many of them are personal with respect to both me and my mentor/PI/advisor, I'm going to share them under lock in a separate post. Look for that later today. (NB for anyone who finds this coming from my field, isn't under friendslock filter, and is curious: I also feel really strongly about my PI being a good dude who clearly cares about his students and colleagues and wants them to succeed. Me wanting to talk under lock isn't critical gossip about him or his mentorship in any way.)
More generally, I've been on both ends of the mentor/mentee divide with this respect now--I had a queer enby undergraduate I was supervising, although I think we were both a little frustrated by the lack of work I had for them while they were working with me. And--it's complicated! With respect to my student, for example, I was walking this weird thing where I was aware of their pronouns and nb status while I don't actually think anyone else in the lab was, because I'd found out from them following me over Twitter; we didn't talk about it except when I was drafting a letter of recommendation and wanted to know what pronouns they wanted me to use in the lab and otherwise.
Oh, hell. It's such a soup of emotion and feelings and weird overtones of family while not being family, you feel me? I mean, I'm in my seventh year of my PhD now, and also there's that delighted "wait, you have a gay PI?!" reaction from fellow queer students, and it's sometimes confusing for me to navigate all the tangled stuff that snarls together between queer mentorship and scientific mentorship and my own family of origin issues for me. I am about two hundred percent sure that it's confusing the other way, too.
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timeasmymeasure
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Date: 2019-01-22 03:18 pm (UTC)More generally, I've been on both ends of the mentor/mentee divide with this respect now--I had a queer enby undergraduate I was supervising, although I think we were both a little frustrated by the lack of work I had for them while they were working with me. And--it's complicated! With respect to my student, for example, I was walking this weird thing where I was aware of their pronouns and nb status while I don't actually think anyone else in the lab was, because I'd found out from them following me over Twitter; we didn't talk about it except when I was drafting a letter of recommendation and wanted to know what pronouns they wanted me to use in the lab and otherwise.
Oh, hell. It's such a soup of emotion and feelings and weird overtones of family while not being family, you feel me? I mean, I'm in my seventh year of my PhD now, and also there's that delighted "wait, you have a gay PI?!" reaction from fellow queer students, and it's sometimes confusing for me to navigate all the tangled stuff that snarls together between queer mentorship and scientific mentorship and my own family of origin issues for me. I am about two hundred percent sure that it's confusing the other way, too.