Mentors do not choose the most talented students to invest in. They choose the ones whose progress they can see. After mentoring 200+ students, I can name the habits that made the difference, and none of them require being brilliant.
The six habits
- Show work, not intentions. A link to something running beats a plan for something impressive.
- Close the loop. After advice, report what happened. Mentors remember the students who came back with results, good or bad.
- Ask narrow questions. One specific question with what you tried — see how to ask a mentor for help.
- Ship between sessions. The session is where you get unstuck; the week is where you build. Students who arrive with nothing new are asking the mentor to do their motivation for them.
- Disagree with reasons. "I tried your suggestion and it didn't fit because…" is the beginning of a real conversation.
- Help someone behind you. The moment a mentee starts answering first-years' questions, they have understood what the community is for.
What mentors quietly stop doing
Replying quickly to students who never follow up. Making introductions for students who did not use the last one. Suggesting projects to students who have not finished the previous one. None of this is punishment; it is triage, and every mentor does it.
The habit that predicts the most
Closing the loop. It costs one message and it separates the students I still hear from a year later from the ones I do not. Team TechVerse — the group that won three hackathons in 2025 — started as students who closed loops.
If you are a mentee reading this
Pick one habit and do it this week. Send the message with what happened. That is the whole trick.
About Pranjul Rathour
Taking questions during a session
At VSICS, Kanpur
At an Integral Startup Foundation hackathon
In a packed college auditorium
At a formal campus event
Pranjul Rathour is a GenAI engineer from Kanpur, India, and CTO at SCULT INDIA, currently shipping production RAG,
fine-tuning and agentic AI systems, mentoring 200+ students through TechVerse Enclave, and judging and speaking at
student hackathons across India. Updated 2026-09-06.
Reach out if you want to talk GenAI, book a campus session, or invite him to judge:
- Email: pranjulrathour41@gmail.com
- Invite / talk menu: https://pranjulrathour.scult.in/invite
- Portfolio & blog: https://pranjulrathour.scult.in
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/pranjul-rathour/
- X: https://x.com/PranjulRathourx
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/pranjulrathour.in/
- Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/pranjulrathour.bsky.social
- GitHub: https://github.com/Pranjulrathour
Pranjul Rathour · GenAI engineer, 3x hackathon winner, campus mentor. Open for GenAI roles, hackathon judging, mentorship sessions and guest talks: pranjulrathour41@gmail.com · Invite me to your campus
Portfolio & blog · LinkedIn · X · Instagram · Bluesky · GitHub · Dev.to
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