Gaining a Mentor

I am extremely happy to report that I have acquired a mentor. At the beginning of the week I found myself losing hope of securing a mentor due to scheduling concerns but after a brief talk over zoom, where I explained the process of the mentorship, I was able to convince Dr. Tim Barckholtz to be my mentor.

Dr. Barckholtz has a PhD in chemistry and is the Senior Scientific Advisor at Corporate Strategic Research at ExxonMobil working on reducing carbon emissions. After talking with him about what the mentorship entailed, he completely surprised me by sending an email later that day regarding a project that I could work on. This project entails tracing CO2 pipelines throughout the country and seeing their relevance and distance to areas of high greenhouse gas production. While I only have a surface level understanding of the project and the concepts that I will use for this project, I am certainly prepared to learn more and gain all of the knowledge that I can out of this opportunity.

I am most excited about how enthusiastic my mentor is. Originally, Dr. Barckholtz was a bit skeptical about the time commitment and how he would be able to fulfill the mentorship duties considering he is based in New Jersey while I am here in Texas. After our conversation where we discussed many of the details of the mentorship and how things would work, he became extremely excited about this and seems willing to jump in with both feet. This is definitely an attitude that I was searching for in a mentor as I wanted someone who was excited to teach me and guide me as I work to become a young professional.

This next week will be spent mostly on preparing myself for my first mentor visit which is scheduled for Thursday of next week. My plan is to begin reading a book my mentor recommended and then look through the resources he has sent me and be prepared to discuss the next steps of my project. I am very excited about this new development and look forward to the coming weeks where I believe I will learn so much.