Another thing we discussed that might be relevant is the potential usefulness of peer mentoring, either through an intra-institution reading group or finding cohorts of like-minded grad students at other institutions. Talking to other people about what they’re getting (& giving) to their faculty mentors might help you figure out what would work best for you. Good luck!

its interesting that (I don’t think) comments from the mentoring panel haven’t come up more. i was in the generations of media studies panel at the time, but followed as much as I could via twitter. it seemed to talk more about mentoring at the individual institutional level rather than in organizations like SCMS or elsewhere. twitter itself came up as a possible resource, but as has been noted throughout these discussions the people on twitter and the topics discussed there can be limited. however, the reason I raise the issue of that panel is that though I’ve heard some good (and even encouraging) advice about mentoring especially over the last few days (and months of starting my phd) which has emphasized knowing what you want you from a mentor relationship and making it clear to the mentor, I still have trouble figuring out what that is for me (especially as someone who doesn’t really like to talk about my work until its in a form im at least somewhat confident in). Even if comments like yours and Elana Levine’s are encouraging, hearing that more senior faculty members would be interested in this kind of work, even if I feel more comfortable potentially email someone whose work I admire or who I would like to develop a relationship with, I’m still unsure of what to say or ask of them, of what kind of relationship I want, what kind of relationship might be most useful. its a similar dilemma to approaching someone after a panel. finding questions to ask that might inspire a real dialogue is something that tends to leave me at a loss.

I’ll fully acknowledge my own awkwardness and discomfort with reaching out myself. I’ll fully acknowledge a simple desire for all of this to be easy, which it probably never will be. But there’s still a nagging suspicion that others in the field aren’t meeting me part way.

When I go to conference at this stage in my career, I am most keen to hear exciting work by grad students, and because at this stage of my career I oversee some things, I try to offer them to people who I’ve heard or met whose work I think is exciting, and I often try to collaborate with younger scholars as well as “offering opportunities,” and I want to learn from them. Mentoring is a relationship, and these are always two ways, even if certainly laced by power (but this is changing as people move in their careers and get to know each other better). Meeting “famous” people always seems scary to me (although it’s fun to see what they look like), and this gets back to the branding thing in this thread. I go to SCMS (etc.) on the lookout for smart people working in the areas that interest me with whom I can make connections. Then, I make the effort to make that connection: like we are all trying to do here.

And I want to emphasize throughout, the idea of common interests and the fact that some forums like twitter and the SCMS conference itself may be more conducive to discussion of certain research topics and interests than others.

There are also, however, numerous perhaps unique aspects of my own personality and my own situation that contribute to my relationship to all of the things I’ve been talking about.

As Alex points out below, there’s already some forms of this idea of mentoring going on at the conference, and it would seem wise to expand it (I believe that DML did a similar program this year, though I am not sure how successful it was).

Certainly if the program goes well, a solid base of mentors can be built as people who took advantage of the program could pay it back by being mentors themselves later down the line.