Postsecondary education is rapidly changing. Virtually every kind of institution aspires to higher status, major internal restructuring continues on many campuses, and expectations for faculty productivity keep rising. The academic gender gap for women in the professoriate is characterized by smaller salaries for comparable positions, underrepresentation in higher faculty ranks and in disciplines traditionally dominated by men, over representation in part-time positions, and slower rates of earning tenure and promotion. Grounded in professional socialization literature, the purpose of this phenomenologically oriented paper is to examine how physical education teacher education (PETE) women academics report meanings they make of mentoring experiences. The 54 PETE women completed and returned two paper-and-pencil exercises, a "rainbow of life roles", a career time line, and they submitted their current "curriculum vitae" (CVs). The paper-and-pencil exercises are designed to focus participants' reflections on critical aspects of their lives and career histories in long interviews of 2-4 hours each which are audio taped and transcribed verbatim. In order to fully understand the impact of mentoring, two time periods are examined. The first, during childhood and adolescence, will be referred to as preprofessional or anticipatory socialization and the second, during one's faculty career (i.e., before and after doctoral education), as organizational socialization. All results are based on PETE women's "perceptions" of mentoring in keeping with the phenomenological nature of this study. Major findings indicate that PETE women reported many instances of mentoring from a variety of people in their lives, from childhood through adulthood, and through their early professional training and careers.