Being a Padawan and Mastering the Force: A Dissertation Quest

This study explores the experiences of one doctoral researcher and two doctoral peers navigating mentor-mentee relationships through a literary lens, employing autoethnographic methods to capture the nuanced dynamics of guidance, expectation, and emotional labor. Data were drawn from narratives found in reflective journals, personal memos, email exchanges, text messages and conversations with four faculty mentors and two doctoral peers accumulated through the doctoral journey.  The narratives were analyzed using thematic analysis. Using vignettes and incident reports, the research highlights key turning moments in the doctoral journey that shaped perceptions of mentorship, emphasizing both the cognitive and affective dimensions of academic identity development. Findings reveal that mentees often confront mismatched expectations, experience emotional labor, and negotiate cognitive dissonance when aligning their scholarly identities with mentor guidance. By centering the mentee perspective, this study challenges traditional views of passive doctoral socialization and underscores the importance of active, reciprocal engagement in mentorship. The research contributes to understanding the complexities of doctoral mentorship and offers practical implications for cultivating supportive, reflective, and equitable mentor-mentee relationships in higher education. Additionally, the study contributes to the literature by offering an experience-based framework of JOY (Journey, Openness, Yield) for understanding doctoral mentorship process and proposes to help guide productive mentor-mentee relationships.