Flashes of Panic

I continue to be surprised by the gap between my own assessment of my academic abilities, and the faculty’s apparent opinion of me. An example came in this morning’s email:

The position of “CUSP [Computing Undergraduate Scholars Program - ed.] grad mentor” is an “add-on” position to a fully-funded RA/TA/GA position. Although in general an RA/TA/GA cannot take on extra work, there is a small codicil that says that in the case where it is to the mutual benefit of [the] University and to the graduate students, one may take on up to an additional 5 hours/week at an hourly rate. [snip] Other hours would be for planning what happens at the lunch meetings or possibly meeting with CUSP students individually not in the lunch meeting. Overall, it is similar to CSEMS [Computer Science, Engineering, and Math Scholars - ed.], but with fewer students, with them involved in computing research projects, and with the goal to mentor these students to consider graduate school seriously, as well as summer research. …

… I hope you will consider being a part of the mentoring team. I have heard good things about what kind of energy and creativity you might bring to the program that would of course impact the students’ experience.

Now, “energy” and “creativity” are not words I would have used to describe my year in graduate school. “Tenacity” and “thickheadedness,” perhaps. (“Energy” comes between “empty-headed” and “failure” in my dictionary, not that that means anything.)

Still, my own cognitive dissonance isn’t the issue here. (Maybe later.) I need to figure out what to do about this mentoring program. Pros and cons:

• It represents a pay raise (upper bound of 20%, if I’m figuring correctly.) I’m not as hard up as most grad students, but I still want to have good reasons before I turn down a raise.
• This is an opportunity to do something good for the field. If I’m vaguely serious about sticking with it and becoming faculty someday, this is exactly the sort of thing I should be doing.
• It will give me greater exposure to real research in the field and presumably help me clarify whether I want to do that as a career.
• It’s another positive line in the recommendation letters people will be writing for me when I’m eventually trying to get a job at any level. In general, very good karma.

And, on the downside,

• It’s another time commitment, another chunk of every week gone. I am already overprogrammed. I sometimes run with the Ph.D. student who is the other mentor; she’s unquestionably on the harried side.
• I know little enough about research that I’m not sure how useful I will be.
• Is it responsible for me to mentor others to consider graduate school? This is unquestionably a recruiting program; do we as a field really need more grad students? (Well, yes, of course we do, but we need the right grad students.)
• The nail that sticks up gets hammered down.

Anyone else have suggestions or advice? (I’m particularly interested in hearing from people in CS, but don’t let that stop the rest of you.)

Update, a few hours later: Looking at the web pages of the various faculty involved, nearly every one is involved at some level with the problem of attracting and retaining under-represented populations in engineering disciplines—for example, almost all of them are listed as co-authors on a paper titled, Model for Mentoring and Retaining Engineering Students from Underrepresented Groups. So add my stated interest in that goal to the list.

Now Playing: Sheltering Sky from Cherry Marmalade by Kay Hanley

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