If you have been reading my blog the past couple of weeks, you know that I have hit a road bump in my mentorship. It was hard to process that fact that my mentor in Houston was facing a life-threatening situation but sometimes you just have to make lemonade from lemons. Since Dr. Kathie Thomas-Keprta can’t mentor at a full capacity, I had to find an individual that was willing to mentor me for the rest of the ISM year. As I was pondering over this for days, the name, Dr.Bywaters, popped up in my head. I interviewed her earlier on in the first semester and consulted with her for my original work. She was so kind and extremely helpful. Her character and experience made me realize that she might be the perfect fit for a mentor. Of course, I didn’t know if she would agree because the mentorship was kind of last minute. Fortunately, after speaking to her, she agreed and now she is one of my mentors. I know some of you might be wondering what she does for a living. Dr. Bywaters is an astrobiologist at NASA AMES in California. In addition to this, she is a published fictional author! How cool is that? I know the transition from one mentorship to another will be difficult but I know that this is the right thing to do. I will still be working with Dr. Thomas-Keprta and she will always be my mentor, just not a full-time ISM Mentor.
