The Power of Having a Mentor in Your Corner
There is a particular kind of support that changes not just what you accomplish but how you experience the process of accomplishing it.
Most doctoral students have advisors. They have committee members, supervisors, and instructors. These relationships are necessary and often valuable. But they are not the same as having a mentor who is genuinely, fully in your corner -- someone who sees your potential clearly, invests in your growth deliberately, and advocates for you in rooms you have not entered yet.
I have been fortunate to have that kind of mentor during my doctoral training in psychology. And the difference it has made is not peripheral. It has been foundational.
What Real Mentorship Actually Looks Like
There is a version of academic mentorship that is primarily administrative. Forms get signed, feedback gets given, requirements get met. That version has its place. But it is not what I am talking about.
The mentorship I have experienced goes significantly further. It has involved someone who helped me refine my research interests from the beginning of my doctoral training -- not by redirecting me toward their own interests, but by asking the right questions to help me understand my own more clearly. The clarity that came from those early conversations did not just strengthen the quality of my work. It strengthened my confidence as a researcher. Knowing that someone with real experience and insight believed in my ideas changed how I approached my own scholarship.
That shift matters more than it might sound. Doctoral training involves a sustained period of developing expertise in an environment where you are, by definition, not yet an expert. The self-doubt that comes with that territory is real and sometimes significant. A mentor who consistently reflects your potential back to you -- who treats your developing ideas with seriousness rather than condescension -- helps you build the internal scaffolding that keeps you moving forward when the work gets hard.
Stepping Into the Broader Academic Community
One of the things I am most grateful for in this mentorship is the consistent encouragement to step beyond the classroom and engage with the broader academic community.
Graduate school can be genuinely isolating. The work is demanding, the learning curve is steep, and it is easy to spend months inside your own program without encountering the larger field that your work is eventually meant to contribute to. That isolation compounds imposter syndrome. If you never see yourself in professional academic spaces, it becomes harder to imagine belonging there.
My mentor understood this and actively worked against it. With guidance and encouragement, I had the opportunity to present my work at conferences including the Midwestern Psychological Association conference in 2025. That experience was not just professionally valuable -- though it was that. It expanded my understanding of the conversations happening in my field. It sharpened how I communicate my ideas to audiences outside my immediate cohort. And it connected me with researchers and clinicians whose work intersects with my own in ways I would not have discovered from inside a classroom.
Having a mentor who does not just encourage these opportunities but actively supports your preparation for them makes entering professional spaces feel genuinely possible rather than distant and intimidating. The difference between thinking about presenting at a conference and actually doing it is often the presence of someone who says -- you are ready for this, let me help you get there.
The Opportunities That Teach What Classrooms Cannot
Some of the most important professional skills are not developed through coursework. They are developed through doing things -- real things, with real stakes, in real collaboration with other people.
One of the most meaningful experiences of my doctoral training so far has been participating in the planning and hosting of a graduate-student-led conference at my university. This was not a small undertaking. It required coordination, leadership, communication across different stakeholders, and the kind of sustained organizational follow-through that academic programs talk about but rarely create direct opportunities to practice.
That project, which has since received administrative approval for a Fall 2026 iteration, taught me things about collaboration and leadership that I could not have learned from reading about them. It also reinforced something I have come to believe deeply: mentorship is most powerful when a mentor uses their position and influence not to center themselves but to open doors for the people they are developing.
My mentor did exactly that. The confidence to take on that project, to see it through, and to do it well -- that confidence had a source, and the mentorship I have received is a significant part of it.
Belonging in Professional Spaces
Academia has a way of making some people feel like they belong and others feel like they are perpetually proving themselves. That dynamic is not random. It follows familiar patterns related to identity, background, and access to the informal networks that determine whose work gets seen and whose goes unnoticed.
Mentors who actively work to connect their students with respected professionals in the field are doing something that matters beyond individual career development. They are helping disrupt those patterns. They are demonstrating, through action, that their students belong in those rooms -- and they are making it materially more possible for them to enter.
Through this mentorship I have been able to connect with professionals whose work I respect and whose perspectives have deepened both my understanding of my research area and my sense of belonging within the broader discipline. Those connections did not happen by accident. They happened because my mentor was willing to make introductions, to vouch for me, and to treat my professional development as something worth their active investment.
That kind of advocacy is rare. And it matters in ways that compound over a career.
What This Kind of Mentorship Inspires
There is something contagious about being around someone who genuinely believes in the importance of professional community -- who encourages students to share their work, attend conferences, submit proposals, and take their place in the larger conversation of their field.
Before this mentorship, there were opportunities I would not have pursued. Proposals I would not have submitted. Rooms I would not have walked into. Not because I was not capable, but because I had not yet built the specific combination of confidence, preparation, and support that makes taking those risks feel possible rather than reckless.
The encouragement to take those steps -- and the consistent presence of someone who had already done the groundwork to make them more accessible -- changed what I was willing to try. And in doctoral training, what you are willing to try often determines what you eventually achieve.
What I Want Other Doctoral Students to Know
If you are in a doctoral program and you have not yet found this kind of mentorship, keep looking. Be intentional about identifying faculty whose values and research interests align with yours, and be willing to cultivate those relationships with genuine investment.
And if you have found it -- if there is someone in your program who is truly in your corner -- take a moment to acknowledge what that means. Not just the professional doors it opens, but the internal shift it creates. The way it changes your relationship to your own potential.
Success in academia is rarely achieved alone. The narrative of the solitary scholar grinding toward achievement in isolation is both inaccurate and unhelpful. What actually moves people forward -- through doctoral programs, through the uncertainty of early career development, through the sustained difficulty of doing meaningful work -- is connection. Mentorship. Community. People who believe in you before you fully believe in yourself.
Having that kind of support has made all the difference in my journey. I am deeply grateful for it, and I hope sharing it here encourages someone else to seek it out or to offer it to the next person who needs it. If you need support you can book a clarity call and we can work together to get you on the right path: https://www.jasmynsteele.com/shop/p/career-academic-clarity-call
Jasmyn Steele, M.A. is a doctoral student in Clinical Psychology (Military Track) at Adler University, Chicago, IL, where she has been involved in graduate student leadership and academic conference participation. Follow her work at jasmynsteele.com.
