Having an enthusiastic group of PhD students around is great for motivation, camaraderie and intellectual stimulation. It can also be a bit of a minefield. As Occam's Typewriter blogger, Erika Cule touches on here, students are apprenticed to/by(?) their supervisor in 'hidden' ways, as well as through the obvious aspects of academic expertise. It's a special relationship in many respects, and yes, now that I think about it, I'm pretty sure that apprenticeship is the best way to describe it.
Once again, the parenting analogy comes to mind. There are things about yourself that you just can't know until you've been in a supervision/parenting relationship for a while. Where else do you get to see reflected, clear as a bell and right back atcha, not what you SAY but what you DO?
Ergo, if you don't want The Boy to run around while he's eating toast (how does the jam get behind his ears?) then you have to stay sitting down yourself all the way through breakfast. And if you want your PhD students to be ethical in their research, you can't cut corners yourself, or treat something like participant consent in an offhand manner.
PhD students are adults, but they're often pretty green ones. I certainly was (ahem. am.). So, even the student who grumbles about their supervisor - and let's face it, what are the chances of getting through 3 + x (+ xx) years of regular contact without pissing each other off once in a while? - is still going to be deeply influenced by them. The way we behave at conferences, the way we interact with local colleagues, our attention to detail, how we deliver feedback... Whether we like it or not, we nurture attitudes and mannerisms, and whether we (or the student) think we're getting it right or not, we habitually model what it is to be a professional academic.
Minefield, huh?
Once again, the parenting analogy comes to mind. There are things about yourself that you just can't know until you've been in a supervision/parenting relationship for a while. Where else do you get to see reflected, clear as a bell and right back atcha, not what you SAY but what you DO?
Ergo, if you don't want The Boy to run around while he's eating toast (how does the jam get behind his ears?) then you have to stay sitting down yourself all the way through breakfast. And if you want your PhD students to be ethical in their research, you can't cut corners yourself, or treat something like participant consent in an offhand manner.
PhD students are adults, but they're often pretty green ones. I certainly was (ahem. am.). So, even the student who grumbles about their supervisor - and let's face it, what are the chances of getting through 3 + x (+ xx) years of regular contact without pissing each other off once in a while? - is still going to be deeply influenced by them. The way we behave at conferences, the way we interact with local colleagues, our attention to detail, how we deliver feedback... Whether we like it or not, we nurture attitudes and mannerisms, and whether we (or the student) think we're getting it right or not, we habitually model what it is to be a professional academic.
Minefield, huh?
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