I am a freshman industrial design student,
and have a few questions about mentors.
In our school, students have different mentors depending on the major.
Mentors are usually either head of or a professor in the major.
Will it be good to introduce myself to my mentor ?
What are some specific ways that Mentors help the students?
To put it simply, I’m not sure what Mentors do,
and would like to know more about them.
Thanks in advance.
It’s definitely a good idea to introduce yourself and utilize your mentor as a resource. Your mentor can offer you advice and direction on projects, and more importantly portfolio. If you are lucky, this person will have years of real-world experience and could even be the key person to getting your first job.
If you want specifics about what your mentor is able to offer you, then go and talk to him or her.
What he said ^. And be proactive about it. A mentor can just be an upperclassman who’s already been there and done that (remember, they will be graduating before you and getting a job, so you’ll already have an “in” into the companies your upperclassmen get work in, that’s how your network starts and you get a foot in the door).
It can be another teacher, whether you have them for class or not. I’ve unofficially mentored a few students that weren’t mine in addition to my own students and I’ve known others that have done the same. So just get out and meet people, everyone above you is a potential mentor.