Being a ScholarX Mentee: A Step Worth Taking as a Research Student
My experience so far with the ScholarX mentoring program
Interacting with people with similar goals like ourselves is a fruitful experience because it is easy to connect with others and we get to learn a lot from those interactions. A few weeks ago, I had the opportunity to join the ScholarX mentoring program as a mentee where I met many young adults with similar aspirations and career goals. Five of us had a very fun yet meaningful conversation with our mentor.
Before diving into my experiences, let me give a brief background.
What is ScholarX?
“Founded by Sustainable Education Foundation, ScholarX is a 6-month program for Sri-Lankan undergraduates who would like to get free premium mentoring during their study period.” — SEF
ScholarX is an initiative of Sustainable Education Foundation, aiming to nurture Sri Lankan undergraduates through mentoring. The mentors are experts from around the globe who excel in different fields including but not limited to engineering, computer science, life science, and physical science. Each participant will be assigned a mentor with whom they’ll involve in various activities for a span of 6-months.
I got to know about this program from LinkedIn and thought let’s give it a try. And here I am, after one month into the program 😊.
My Mentor
If I am to describe my mentor in two words: cool and hardworking. I’m being mentored by Saranya Narayana, a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Calgary. Genetics, Genomics, Epidemiology, and Bioinformatics are some of her research interests.
My Initial Thoughts and the Journey So Far
Since I’m from a computer science background, I was skeptical at the beginning of how effective our interactions would be (even though I am interested in Bioinformatics as well). However, after our first meeting with all the mentees, I realized that this is only a trifling matter.
The experience of others is a valuable source of knowledge. Just from the first meeting which lasted for about one and a half hours, I learned a lot from everybody. Since the mentees ourselves are from different backgrounds, from medicine to engineering, we talked about a wide spectrum of things. We talked about our future goals, what we expect to achieve from this mentoring program, how can our mentor help us, and other mandatory details of a self-introduction. I had a lot of fun primarily because the conversations were interesting and being able to meet new people after almost a year because of the COVID played its part as well.
In my opinion, this mentoring program is a good opportunity because of several reasons. We get guidance from somebody who already has achieved what we aspire to achieve. In my case, it is getting into a good Ph.D. program which involves preparing for the TOEFL /IELTS and GRE exams, statement of purpose, curriculum vitae, and many more. I find having some guidance along the process very valuable. I also feel that the conversations with people like my mentor expose me to a completely new world that I am unaware of.
This is article is intended only to give a very brief overview since it has only been a month. The current plan is to share the updates every month so that others with similar interests also can get to know about this opportunity for which you don't have to spend a single penny. Looking forward to my next article with more detailed updates.
“Nothing is more expensive than a missed opportunity”
— H. Jackson Brown
