The Importance of Summer Mentorship

Hello Everyone!

I am Adhip Maitra, thank you for watching my video blog, hope you like it!

Today I am going to talk about my ongoing Summer Mentorship as a finalist at the 3M Young Scientist Challenge, as Summer Mentorship is one of the many things that separates the 3M Young Scientist Challenge from the other similar science competitions. As part of this initiative, I have the opportunity to get guidance from a real 3M scientist about my research problems, and the path I should choose to solve them. I had to choose a new research topic in the finalist stage of this competition so that I can incorporate a 3M product in the solution prototype and honestly, without my mentor’s help I would be lost and meandering in the wrong direction!

Having access to a 3M scientist has enlightened me on how research should be organized and conducted, and how much the small nit bits matter, and focusing on the larger picture is just not good enough. Mentorship has taught me the importance of planning my research and has shown me how researching is a process in which we must plan each step very carefully. Earlier, I would just rush in with the research, without a detailed process to be organized and efficient. Mentorship has taught me that when researching I should not just gather knowledge, facts and figures to come up with a solution but should also question things, I should question the assumptions made and the feasibility and economics of the solutions I am proposing. In the last few weeks, I have been able to identify a new problem to solve, which I feel can have a significant impact on humankind. I have also learnt a lot of science during the researching phase from my mentor, things which I wouldn’t otherwise have known. My mentor has also pointed me to the right resources that I should use as a part of my research. Thus, researching under mentorship has really been a great experience so far for me and I am glad I got the opportunity to participate in this competition.

Hoping to talk to you more about my project in the next blog as I make more progress in my project. Thank you!