Help wanted: sage and wise chemist

Abstract

When you are just starting out on your career, a lot of challenges lie ahead. Even though they may seem daunting, there is one resource which is convenient to use and can help make the struggle easier. This resource is a mentor. By finding a mentor you gain someone who can point you in the right direction, can tell you how she or he overcame similar problems to your own, or can advise you how to deal with them. But how does the young scientist find a mentor? And what qualities should a good mentor possess? Technical brilliance is often the one attribute that younger scientists recognize and naturally think of as the most important mentoring characteristic. This may sometimes be the case, but more often it is not. The personality characteristics that favor mentoring do not correspond to the qualities that lead to technical brilliance. There is no real correlation or connection between these abilities. Anyone can show a willingness to listen and give advice. While mentoring may require some technical capabilities so that guidance can be given on technical issues, such a mentor may be of very little use if they do not have the required personal qualities too. I would like to turn to the analogy of sports, where the star athlete is often a rather poor coach because she or he often readily performed the activities that were necessary to excel. Such a person understands less of the fundamentals needed to perform well, because performing well came more easily to them than to most people due to their natural athleticism, coordination, strength, and other attributes. Often it just seemed to happen for them. Although they whet and hone their skills, the natural abilities they possess meant that they did not have to learn how to excel at their sport as much as a less gifted athlete. Their practice and skill-building moved them to and up through the higher levels of performance, but being good was never an issue. The more marginal athlete, one who may have reached the higher levels of competition through hours after hours after hours of practice, is much more aware of the skills needed and what types of work will build them. Many successful coaches were not star athletes, but minor ones. They were the substitutes in the team sports or the people who seldom finish first or second or even third in the individual sports, but competed and occasionally did well. The same applies in the scientific arena: naturally lessgifted scientists often make excellent mentors because they had to study, work, and think harder to get where they are. A brilliant scientist, on the other hand, may remember everything ever read or heard on a subject and find it easy to be able to assimilate and to coalesce these into new, creative ideas. This inherent natural talent turns tasks such as reading and correlating the literature into less work for the gifted scientist. When asked to advise others in how to organize their literature reading and their time effectively, their answers will not be drawn from personal experiences. The gifted scientist may just respond with a quizzical look if asked how they do certain things. Technical competence may be a criterion for a mentor, but not necessarily technical brilliance. Anal Bioanal Chem (2006) 386:1939–1940 DOI 10.1007/s00216-006-0862-y