It’s the last day of the conference and it’s time to pick favorites! One of my favorites is the Mentor Program. 

Attending a conference is a great opportunity to share your work, learn about cutting edge research, and  to network. Much more than networking, Goldschmidt offers a mentor program that facilitates meaningful connections and creates a supportive environment for the attendees, especially novice conference attendees, students, and early career scientists. Let’s take a look at what some mentees and mentors felt about the program. 

Mentee 1: Loved the mentor program! First, we were provided a lounge (see image above) where we could comfortably chat. I met a very nice and proactive mentor who happily answered my questions – scientific or non-scientific, gave career advice, and introduced me to different colleagues. It was interesting because each of them was at a different career stage and I learned valuable lessons from their unique experiences including balancing work and family life and maximizing opportunities during my PhD.

Mentee 2: At first, I thought we would just talk about science and the conference but we even touched equally important topics like career paths and mental well-being which are not usually talked about.

Mentee 3: The most memorable advice I got was “Focus on the present.” As scientists, we tend to plan ahead but “planning” is different from “worrying”.

Mentor 1: I joined the mentoring program because I wanted to see whether I can help young scientists in any way. And because it is inspiring to see an eager young generation ready to overturn everything we old farts are claiming, or claim to know. It was also fascinating to hear the broad range of topics that occupy their thoughts. It’s not easy to give useful advice about a career in science in such a short meeting, but I was happy to try and connect my ‘mentees’ (I would prefer young colleagues) to people in my network.

Mentor 2: It’s a nice program. I told my mentees that it doesn’t end here at Goldschmidt and they can contact me anytime.

I’d like to highlight is that out of the >3700 on-site participants, >10% of attendees needed mentoring (e.g., 475 PhD students) and while smaller, there were a significant number (>200) of experienced scientists that were very much willing to pass their knowledge. I could only hope that Goldschmidt continues to have this program and more and more attendees will actively participate in it.