Dancing with mentors

The other day I enjoyed a delicious chocolate fondue with some international classmates. It was an evening of swapping Christmas holiday stories about trips to Greece, Barcelona, Andalusia and Prague, parents who came to visit, Dutch New Years traditions such as the immense fireworks (and the immense amount of money spent on them) and the annual morning dip in Scheveningen. Of course the 'halfway presentation' of final thesis projects was an issue, with the deadlines coming closer. Touching on this subject, one of my Chinese friends started complaining about the hassle in finding graduation mentors. "I thought I had determined my ideal trio, but the first one openly stated that she didn't like working with the second one on my list. Of course I had the right to insist, but that wouldn't be for my good." This triggered a Japanese student to tell about the struggle he's been having with this issue for months already. "I'm being sent from one to the other. This one teacher keeps advising that he be my mentor, though I'm not so sure he's the right person. Why is he insisting so much - he doesn't even know exactly what I'm up to?"

When choosing mentors, you enter into a world of likes and dislikes between teachers, professors and studios. For my thesis, I dared to propose a guest mentor from a Rotterdam design office. Even without looking at my project the chair-professor made it clear that this was like committing a sin. "This is a university, why choose somebody from private practice? We're not going to pay for him... there are enough mentors in our faculty." Of course I experienced personal conflicts and rivalry at my university in Ankara. But the combination of theoretical and practical approaches is quite common and can lead to interesting results. At least the thesis topic itself was leading in the discussion, and not the rigid rules or the tight financial bookkeeping. Competition and concern for effectiveness is helpful, but TU Delft, watch your content.