Loading ...I found my topic this week thanks to Lifehack.org to write about building relationships. This is a great topic since this ties to one of the goals of this blog, which is to allow students and alums to build relationships. Ideally, the relationship we build here leads to REAL, in-person, type of relationship. Reason being in today’s world, it’s easy enough to connect to hundred’s of people through the popular social networking sites. Personally, I see it hard to establish a strong relationship without the in-person and face-to-face interaction. Maybe it’s just missing the firm handshake. Or maybe it’s just me. So until one of the Internet giants invents the virtual firm handshake over the web, to each’s own 
Why bother?
There are many facts to support why we should build relationships but I will write about one I resonate with and one that is most applicable to ICS students/alums. It is from the book “Stumbling on Happiness” by Daniel Gilbert. In this book, Gilbert promises to give the reader the secret in finding true happiness. He points out the shortcoming of human imagination to incorrectly assess something that we believe will bring us happiness. In the end, there is no magic formula in determining happiness. If so, what can we do to decide what will make us happy? The secret, as it turns out, is to talk to someone who has been down the path you are evaluating, and judge through their experience. Also, it adds credibility if that someone is who you associate closely with and trust. A rather simple example of this is the very act of asking your friends about the latest movies they saw. Think of how their reviews affected whether or not you wanted to see a particular movie. Also consider who the review came from and how close are your movie tastes. Many times this is how we decide if we want to watch a particular movie, simply based on a recommendation from a credible friend. This is the same argument I am trying to make in building relationships. As we progress in our lives, we make many important decisions that we think will bring us happiness in our careers and in school. Should I take a job or stay in school? Should I major in Econ or Computer Science? Should I keep my job or go back to school for that MBA/Masters/PHD degree? Should I take that new position in the other department? These are probably decisions many of us are trying to make, but have no way in telling if they will indeed bring us the happiness we believe it will. So here lies the reason why we build relationships in hopes to find a mentor, or a coach, to walk us through how it was like for them and determine whether or not it will mean the same for you.
What to look for?
So what do you look for in a mentor-type relationship? Keep in mind, your mentor not necessarily have to be older than you. It’s the experience that counts. Make sure your mentor had walk down the path that you are contemplating on taking and see how it was like for them. I think this is the very reason why most professional/collegiate sports coaches are former players/athletes. Are you wondering what it is like developing software full time? Are you wondering what it is like to be a software consultant (or plug in any title you would like i.e. project manager, architect, designer, CTO, etc)? Talk to someone who’s doing it or had done it to find out!
Why help somebody?
All types of relationships are mutual beneficial including mentorship. One may not realize that there are many benefits to being a mentor or coach. One, the act of teaching forces you to learn what you already know, but better. It requires a higher level of learning in order to teach someone else what you know. Second, it gives you a different perspective being on the other side of the fence. Being the teacher, you might realize many things you never did while you were a “student.” This is attributed by the birds-eye-view you have now with the added experience. This helps you to put together and understand the bigger picture. Lastly, it simply feels good to help someone or if you haven’t had the opportunity to mentor someone at work or personally. The simple act of helping others is very fulfilling and a great confidence booster
Resources
If this blog you are reading weren’t enough, Career Connections offered by the UCI Career center is a great way for students to find alums as mentors. Also there is the ICS mentorship program.
In closing, I hope I have successfully communicated one of key missions I have for this blog and also I hope someone found this helpful. Talk to you all next week!
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Hi Jesse,
Thanks for another great post.
Back when software was on punched cards, and I wasn’t old enough to vote, I had two definite mentors at Orange Coast College in Costa Mesa:
an old retired Air Force colonel name McNamara, and a professor named John Clark, who now has his name on the campus computing building.
At UCI I had close relationships with a few professors. I took independent study courses in computing theory with George Lueker and Scott Huddleston (no longer at UCI); both of them also wrote me letters for graduate school. Off campus, I worked for a meteorologist name Joseph Catalano at his small company AeroComp in Costa Mesa, and he was my mentor into scientific computing.
During my first decade at Berkeley Lab, my mentor was a physicist name Chin-Fu Tsang, and he led me into work in world-class, professional science.
But somewhere in the early 1990’s, things changed. I moved to a new division, a new organization at Berkeley Lab, the National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center (NERSC), and was now in the role of mentor.
Maybe the fact that I married in 1987, and became a homeowner in 1994, also had something to do with that.
But now I’m an “old timer,” with very high seniority, and I seem to know a large number of senior people in scientific computing around the country. During my last two years before retirement, I was also asked to coordinate summer internship and educational for computing students at Berkeley Lab.
Now I’m looking forward to a second career as a teacher.
Real human relationships are crucial, perhaps even central, to life, to happiness, to a good career, and even to successful software development!
But relationships can also be real, and deep, without a warm handshake. There are many examples in past generations of very important relationships carried on by correspondence (when people wrote with pens on paper, not on the Web or by email). We cannot all be in the same place at the same time, and sometimes very important relationships might never have a “face to face” aspect.
I think of the social networking software as a mirror of real relationships, and a tool that can allow their development.
I just got onto facebook last Friday, thanks to Albert Wong (whom I’ve never met in person), and now have over 50 friends.
These “friends” are in a few groups:
- a professional group, including some leading computer scientists in the high performance and scientific computing realm, some of who I have not met in person, but we know each other by reputation
- a UCI ICS group, with whom I have a great sense of connetion, although we’ve never met in person
- another UCI group centered in the humanities and teaching
- a family group (with relatives I’ve never met in person, but we have common experience with other relatives)
- a bird group (bird lovers are just different)
- a collection of unrelated other folks, many in the areas of literature, music and language
- my next door neighbors, one of whom just graduated CS from Berkeley two years ago
These “friends” reflect, in a way, my real life, and enrich it, even if we never get to the warm handshake.
Thanks again for a great post!
-Frank
I am an adjunct Associate Professor of Science and Mathematics at Rider University, active as a substitute teacher and mentor in high schools, and a retired professor of physics from Rutgers University. I have taken extensive notes from my experiences and given them to my protégés. Recently I collected them into a book. I suggest that your library purchase the book for the benefit of students, parents, and teachers.
I just wrote a book, “Teaching and Helping Students Think and Do Better”. This is available on amazon.com, ISBN 978-1-4196-7435-8. May I suggest that you order a copy for the library? The readers will be very pleased!
The reviews are superb. Students, teachers, and professors who have looked at the book give it the highest rating.
Typical comments that I hear are things like this: “Hi, Dr. Aranoff!” said a girl, “I got a 100 on the test! I am so happy! Thank you so much!”
I also wrote a paper in Gifted Education Press Quarterly:
Here are some comments:
“We really enjoyed the latest GEPQ and especially liked the article by Sanford Aranoff. He took a very practical approach on an eyeball to eyeball level. A lot of this really needed saying. He showed a keen awareness of the trends towards anti-scientific education that are out there. We made a hard copy of this article and will send it on to the heads of the science and math departments at Loyola Academy with the intention of their distributing it to department chairs in the Jesuit Secondary Education Association.”
Just in case I’m not the only person wondering “Who is Sanford Aranoff?”
- Published “Thermodesorption of Gases from Solids” with Alan W. Smith, Journal of Physical Chemistry, 1958.
- Earned a PhD in Theoretical Physics from NYU in 1965; thesis: “Variational Principles of the Few Body Nucleus”
- Asst. Professor of Physics at Rutgers, 1965-1970.
- Sr. Lecturer, Univ. of the Negev, Beer Sheva, 1970-1973.
- Published “Plasmas Ignored,” Science News, 1990
Sources:
Book: “Challenge: Torah Views on Science and Its Problems,” by Carmell and Domb, 1978
Google Scholar Search
NYU Physics Alumni website