Applying for jobs can be very stressful. You have to get your resume ready, prepare the perfect elevator pitch and pray to God that your WiFi doesn’t cut out during your virtual interview. While things like the stability of WiFi are beyond our control, we can ask others for help with things like preparing for interviews or improving your resume. With the number of resources available on campus, it seems as if it’s easy to get career advice but personally, I found it difficult at times because it was usually just an appointment which lasted for a few minutes and did not factor in my background.
Thankfully, I had better experience through a mentorship program with my major. In the program, we get matched with an alumnus and meet monthly to discuss our goals for the program. For my first two years at Tech, the program wasn’t very useful for me but during my third year, I saw the benefit of it. My mentor was a Black woman who worked with the Center of Teaching and Learning and we bonded the moment we met each other! She was one of the few mentors I looked forward to meeting up with once a month and she actually understood my experience at Tech as a Black woman and as an MSE student.
Even though I bombarded her with a lot of emails for career guidance and resume help, she was more than willing to give me detailed advice. Thanks to her help, I was able to feel more confident in myself as an MSE student and as a valuable employee at any company I worked at. Even though I have a different mentor for this school year, I was able to learn how to interact with my new mentor through my experiences with my mentor from last year.
Beyond career development, having a Black mentor helped me in many different ways throughout that school year. She inspired me to be more involved in my cultural and religious organization as she understood how that was important to me. She also gave me helpful advice with my MSE coursework, as she took the same courses as me many years ago. This made me realize the importance of having a mentor as a Black student at Tech. It’s easy to get lost in how busy and stressful Tech can be but with a mentor who has been able to get in and get out, you will be able to thrive with their wisdom.