The true legacy of mentorship

The true legacy of mentorship

Every supervisor reaches a point, sooner or later, when they must face a simple truth: your publication list will not accompany you. Your institutional rank will not follow you. Your name on every paper, your h-index, and your office title will all cease to matter when your time comes to an end. What you will genuinely take with you is far more tangible and vital: the mark you left on the lives of those you mentored, and the kind of person you chose to be, day after day, in the presence of vulnerable young minds.

Supervision is not a position of power to be exploited. It is a sacred trust. When a student approaches you, uncertain, hopeful, sometimes frightened, they are placing their intellectual and emotional safety in your hands. They are giving you the authority to build them up or pull them down. They trust you with their mental health, their confidence, and their sense of belonging in academia. And yes, they also entrust you with their physical well-being: their workload, stress levels, and dignity as human beings who need rest and balance, not endless grind in laboratories and offices.

The image you provided beautifully captures this protective role of authentic leadership: a manager holding two umbrellas, shielding their team from office politics, blame culture, unrealistic expectations, micromanagement, gossip and drama, stress and burnout, and dirty chaos. This visual metaphor perfectly illustrates what genuine supervision looks like, not standing above your team demanding results, but standing between them and the forces that would harm them, absorbing the institutional pressures so they can thrive.

Some supervisors forget this. They treat students as machines that produce data and papers. They steal ideas without acknowledgement. They delay publications out of ego. They take credit for work they did not do. They speak harshly, belittle, gaslight, and slowly break the spirit of young researchers who come to them full of hope. These supervisors damage students mentally, destroying their confidence, creating anxiety and imposter syndrome that can follow them for years. And sometimes they harm them physically too: through impossible deadlines, pressure to work beyond safe limits, and neglect of well-being in pursuit of metrics.

These are not minor problems or isolated "bad experiences." They are serious, systemic issues that shape the culture of our labs and departments. They contribute to burnout, to talented people leaving academia, and to a quiet, unseen suffering that is never reflected in impact factors or rankings.

But here is what these supervisors fail to realise: damage is the legacy they are creating. That harm is what they will bear. When they close their eyes for the last time, they will know, deep within their conscience, that they hurt people who trusted them.

Being a good supervisor is not easy. It requires fighting, every single day, against your own ego, your own insecurity, and your own desperation to seem important. It involves choosing to lift someone else rather than pulling them down to elevate yourself. It means sometimes saying "no" to your own ambition so that a student can succeed. It entails being gentle when you want to be harsh. It involves giving credit when you could have taken it. And it requires remembering that you were once young and uncertain, too.

This is the true essence of supervision. Not managing publications, but managing yourself. Struggling to be good, struggling to be kind. Remembering that the young person in front of you is a human being with fears, dreams, and a life outside the lab, and that they deserve your respect rather than your exploitation.

This is the most profound truth: we are not here to accumulate possessions. We are not here to surpass others. Our purpose is to support each other. A supervisor's role is not to build their legacy on stolen ideas. Instead, they should help their students forge their own. To advocate for their recognition. To share credit generously. To foster their minds and safeguard their well-being. To see them succeed, even if it means standing in their shadow.

When you choose to help rather than exploit, something beautiful occurs. Your students become your legacy. The researchers they train, inspired by your example, also become part of your legacy. The careers they build ethically because they learned integrity from you are your legacy. The mental health they safeguard in their own future students, because you protected theirs, is your legacy. Not just papers with your name on them. People, shaped by your kindness.

Life will end for all of us one day. There is no escaping it. The question is not whether you will die, but what fragrance you will leave behind. What will people say about you when you are gone? Will they say that you were kind, that you believed in them, that you fought for their success? Or will they say you were someone who used them, who hurt them, who cared more about your rank than about their humanity?

In this dunya, this temporary life, we are only here for a moment. And in that moment, we have the power to help or to harm. We have the power to build others up or tear them down. We have the power to leave a fragrance of kindness, integrity, and genuine mentorship, or a stain of exploitation and cruelty.

Do not build only your CV and your dreams on the exhaustion, silence, and sacrifices of your students. Build people, not just profiles. Let your ambition include their protection, their growth, and their recognition.

Choose the fragrance. Every day, select it again. Be the supervisor who strives to do well. Be the mentor who remembers that supervision is a privilege, not an award. Be the person who helps, who lifts, who honours the trust placed in them. Because in the end, that is all that stays. That is all that matters. That is the only legacy worth building.

Your students will influence how others perceive you through their actions. Ensure their behaviour is something beautiful.