"I exactly know what you tried, what you understood and where you got stuck, where things went as expected etc. etc." It was so frustrating not to get a chance to utter these words as often as I wanted to with my research students. Articulation of what they had to say, just like common sense had seemed to be so elusive. And then I chanced up on the solution, a solution as simple as: a weekly meeting, at an appointed time and very importantly for an hour.
Weekly meeting has been ensuring usage of some of their time during the week in pursuit of tangible outcomes, appointed hour is making sure that I am not excessively annoyed at being interrupted from important duties like updating my facebook entries among others. At the same time, the students are feeling confident that they don't have to have made the biggest discovery of the century to make an appearance. An hour gives both the parties the much needed time to assimilate the progress and decide the future course of action. And to discuss for an hour students automatically feel the need to prepare a presentation with the essential details. No need to tear ones hair, no need to shout, in turn no need to mumble, no need to flip through pages or hunt the latest file among millions of files in the same directory! The key to the conundrum was preparation, that's it. Life has been wonderful ever since.
But but but. Last meeting had to end very abruptly, had to literally push the student out of the room, face was red in agitation and the after effects lasted for 2-3 days. May be one can never be prepared enough..... to be continued.
2 comments:
Take a deep breath when that happens. No point getting a BP over things beyond your control.
With my current student, things used to be really haphazard. The three of us [myself, student and another colleague] would meet every now and then and all three would just talk generalities. Then, following your suggestion [made earlier than the blog entry], a weekly meeting date and time was fixed. That went fine, except that the student used to come without preparing. The one hour was mostly spent hunting for notes or some file from an unorganized directory. Then I wrote a mean - by my standards- email warning him of dire consequences unless he come prepared. Since then, he comes prepared and things have improved so much that I look forward to the meeting.
There are some drawbacks too. As a student, the times when regular meetings were there were my worst. Two days before the meeting, there will be hectic activity and after the meeting, the relief made the next few days go past in relaxation. One week is too little to get any tangible result; as long as the student and adviser realize it, it will be okay. The other barrier that has to be overcome, especially with Indian students, is the notion that being organized means that you are less academic.
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