Steven Spielberg said one day: “The delicate balance of the mentorship of someone does not create them in your own image, but gives them the opportunity to create.” This has certainly been my experience of mentoring students graduate in the past 40 years.
In psychology, graduate students work in close collaboration with a mentor, working side by side for many years, doing research, learning the history of the discipline, debating theory and methods, developing new ideas and testing them, returning to the drawing board and by testing again, always understanding the provisional nature of scientific results.
Science is an endless history; It is a process of boredom and discovery, careful observation and moments of insight. Working so closely together, often for 5 or 6 years while students work towards their doctorate, mentors and graduate students develop more than an academic relationship; They are entwined in the life of the other.
A few weeks ago, my previous graduate students honored me with a Festschrift, a academic retirement celebration during which students and colleagues highlight the winners career– And, of course, tell stories! My students, all now full -fledged successes, said scientific research and discovery stories, because together, we have designed studies, collected data, interpreted results and published articles.
Together in the laboratory of family accounts, we embarked on studies on family narration, the way and the reasons why families who tell more elaborate and emotionally expressive stories facilitate positive results for their children and adolescents. The empirical results of our laboratory – and many other laboratories with which we have collaborated – have put in applications and interventions for families in distress, for teachers and schools, and for adolescents confronted with mental health challenges.
In collaboration With many other researchers, my graduate students and I have demonstrated the importance of stories. In this way, science is a team effort – a story of senior scientists and trainees, post -doctoral students and students, all working together on common objectives, even if they debate and do not agree.
In Festschrift, my students also told more personal stories, stories that built our relationship. Stories of annual celebrations, studies abroad and dinners and dance during conferences – but also stories of difficult decisions, moments of challenge, questioning, both personal and professional. Graduate training is a long road, requiring motivationPerseverance and hard work. There are a lot of bumps along the way: subsidies and non -received scholarships, rejected papers, job offers are not to come.
But there are also great awards. Scientific discovery is exciting, exhilarating! Work for years on a project, read existing research, develop theories and questions, design new methods, test your ideas and get results. And when the results are unexpected, it can be even more interesting – how to understand and interpret when the results question your initial ideas.
It is the endless history of science, discovery and invention, to revisit and revise your ideas, a slow process with moments of clarity and insight.
I am so proud of each of my students because they have made their way around the world. Each of them has forged their own path. Some have become successful and dedicated researchers, some have become dedicated teachers and some have chosen to contribute via the private sector. All have acquired knowledge and skills of their superior journey to make their own contributions to the endless history of science.
Just as scientific progress requires time and resources, scientists in the format. The many years that mentors and students have spent together allow the slow and arduous process of scientific understanding to continue without interruption. My students are now training the next generation of scientists.
I have the privilege of having been a mentor of these young scientists who are now our future. We must continue to invest in training. It’s expensive, of course; It takes time and resources. In the United States, most graduate students and postdoctoral scholarship holders are at least partly supported by federal dollars. We depend on these investments to ensure the continuity of science, that endless history is really endless.
Currently, we are faced with threats to science, a dismantling of infrastructure that helps finance this process. Let us support the endless history of science. Let us support the next generation of scientists so that they can take up the challenges of the future. Let’s go everything defend science!