Bearing and Sharing the Burdens of Mentoring in the COVID-19 Pandemic

Abstract

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• Bearing and Sharing the Burdens of Mentoring in the COVID-19 Pandemic
• Deborah Beck

academic mentoring is one of the many forms of inequity that were laid bare by the COVID-19 pandemic. The plight of junior and contingent faculty is vividly presented in the other paragraphoi in this issue. The difficulties faced by members of the ever-increasing academic "precariat" also affect the shrinking proportion of our field that reaches the kind of professional stability that was once the norm in the academy.¹ As fewer and fewer faculty can reasonably be expected to mentor others, more and more people in the academy need more and more mentoring and support. At the same time, not everyone who reaches a high level of privilege in our field feels that their privilege entails greater responsibility toward others, while some who do feel that responsibility were unable to exercise it during the pandemic for a variety of reasons. The result is that the mentoring responsibilities of any one person can become an overwhelming burden, leading to the same burnout experienced by other helping professions during the pandemic (healthcare, therapists, K–12 teachers, and so forth). In all these professions, the vast needs that were exposed or created by the pandemic are largely continuing during the "New Normal" that has followed the social distancing and lockdowns of 2020–22. Ideally, our pandemic experiences will lead to more effective and equitable approaches to mentoring in higher education. As with mentoring itself, small actions can lead to big improvements for both mentors and mentees.

The job of a mentor, as I think of it, is to help people be the best version of themselves that they can be. Mentoring students pairs this responsibility with teaching them new facts and skills. Mentoring staff and faculty colleagues helps them to navigate challenges and make good use of opportunities at different stages of their professional development. Ideally, mentoring also [End Page 345] fosters a sense of shared responsibility toward and pride in the organization. The differences between teaching, mentoring, and caring are not always clear at the best of times. During the pandemic, those differences largely vanished.

Every word of my definition of "mentor" became more exhausting, difficult, and stressful during the pandemic. What does "help" mean when everyone is struggling with the basics of day-to-day life? What does "best" look like, either in the midst of the pandemic or after its acute phase has ended? "Best" has changed radically after the isolation and online instructional environment of the early years of the pandemic. Everyone's best self right now is significantly less "best" than it would have been in 2019. My memory has not returned to its pre-pandemic levels. My students are less resilient, less able to multitask, less persistent, and less able to retain multiple pieces of complex information.² My colleagues are exhausted, and many are struggling with burnout. Some people have been so shaken, grief-stricken, or harmed by the pandemic that they are no longer sure who they are—finding any version of themselves, let alone the best one, is a challenging process. And even if we know who that "best version" is, can we actually be that person, or have the experiences of the pandemic put the "best" version out of reach? It is a mentor's job to help people find their way through this thicket of questions without beating themselves up if the answers are not what they would have been in 2019.

The unequal distribution and impact of this work was well documented before the pandemic. Women and people of color are more likely to feel pressure and burnout related to their mentoring responsibilities, in part because their own struggles can result in a personal sense of obligation to help others surmount the kinds of issues that they themselves have faced.³ Moreover, the academy—like most workplaces—generally does not place a high priority on acknowledging how crucial mentoring is for the health of the organization, let [End Page 346] alone rewarding it.⁴ An effective mentor is measured by the success of another person. How do we evaluate that?

mentoring students

During the pandemic...