In memory of my mentors, who were without peer: Howard T. Young, Andrew P. Debicki, and E. Inman Fox

When athena wished to advise telemachus on his quest for his long-absent father, odysseus, she slipped into the guise of mentor, the tutor in whose care Odysseus had left his son and household. Respected, wise, war-savvy Athena preferred to counsel her mentee or protégé in the form of a human male rather than as a female goddess. The Greek story suggests the matters of hierarchy, selection, approach, relationships, and gender addressed in the proliferating literature on workplace mentoring. Athena's maneuvers behind the scenes also remind us that, compared with teaching, doing research, writing, advising, serving on local and national committees, editing, applying for grants, and evaluating colleagues and manuscripts, mentoring is perhaps the least recognized and least rewarded aspect of our academic work. The related but substantially different work of advising has achieved a more formal place in academic reviews. Although journals, books, and articles devoted to mentoring attempt to codify the practice and assign it a formal place in the constellation of our working lives, mentoring continues to be elusive, difficult to define, and unevenly carried out. I argue here that this ragged, catch-as-catch-can situation is not necessarily a bad thing. Overinstitutionalization could stifle the vitality of mentoring relationships, which flourish optimally when they are spontaneous, mutual, and open-ended.