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vxjo08 | askacademia_train | 0.93 | How to talk to a grad student about productivity issues? I'm paying one of my grad students for 40 hours of work per week, and I feel like I'm getting barely half of that. How do I politely approach her on this subject without sounding like I'm micromanaging? I'm fairly new to academia, so I haven't really had to deal with this before. Most of what she's currently working on is funded from an internal pot of money, so it's not like she's missing external deadlines from sponsors. I will tell her that I want a certain model estimated by so-and-so, and when that time comes she'll tell me that she was having issues with the software, or the model was giving errors, or that it's taking longer to converge than she expected. I.e., nothing I can definitively call her out on. This is a PhD student entering her third year, and I'm worried that she's slipping. I just don't know how to broach this respectfully. | ifx4oli | ifx9b9n | 1,657,666,752 | 1,657,668,758 | 4 | 31 | >paying one of my grad students for 40 hours of work per week, and I feel like I'm getting barely half of that >PhD student entering her third year I'm guessing she's done with coursework and teaching requirements? Has she passed the qualifying exam or is some of her attention and focus needed there? Does she have a dissertation committee that requires regular meetings? I remember that when I was in grad school I had to present every 6-12 months, depending on how far in I was, for the committee to evaluate the student's progression towards completion. If there's a meeting coming up soon, that can be a topic to discuss with the other members and then address with the student. >having issues with the software, or the model was giving errors, or that it's taking longer to converge than she expected. I mean, that's sometimes how it is. If it seems that there are consistent problems in a certain area, like programming to adjust the model or a lack of important skills/knowledge, then reach out to colleagues/collaborators to arrange for additional training and/or mentorship so that she is better prepared to overcome these hurdles and can do so more quickly. | Let me just add in a perspective you may not have considered. This is a really shitty time to be a PhD student. Most PhD students got pay cuts this year due to inflation, covid is still rampant, anyone who needs a car is paying a fuck-ton in gas money, the US is failing, and people are dealing with mounting health issues like long covid and related conditions. Add all that to the fact that job prospects post-phd have never been worse. Your student is probably struggling and knows you feel this way. Hell, maybe they have seen this post. "Calling her out" is not going to help. Edit: I also gotta ask, since you say you pay them hourly - what is the hourly rate? | 0 | 2,006 | 7.75 |
vxjo08 | askacademia_train | 0.93 | How to talk to a grad student about productivity issues? I'm paying one of my grad students for 40 hours of work per week, and I feel like I'm getting barely half of that. How do I politely approach her on this subject without sounding like I'm micromanaging? I'm fairly new to academia, so I haven't really had to deal with this before. Most of what she's currently working on is funded from an internal pot of money, so it's not like she's missing external deadlines from sponsors. I will tell her that I want a certain model estimated by so-and-so, and when that time comes she'll tell me that she was having issues with the software, or the model was giving errors, or that it's taking longer to converge than she expected. I.e., nothing I can definitively call her out on. This is a PhD student entering her third year, and I'm worried that she's slipping. I just don't know how to broach this respectfully. | ifx9b9n | ifx6o6b | 1,657,668,758 | 1,657,667,611 | 31 | 3 | Let me just add in a perspective you may not have considered. This is a really shitty time to be a PhD student. Most PhD students got pay cuts this year due to inflation, covid is still rampant, anyone who needs a car is paying a fuck-ton in gas money, the US is failing, and people are dealing with mounting health issues like long covid and related conditions. Add all that to the fact that job prospects post-phd have never been worse. Your student is probably struggling and knows you feel this way. Hell, maybe they have seen this post. "Calling her out" is not going to help. Edit: I also gotta ask, since you say you pay them hourly - what is the hourly rate? | I think the answer completely depends on how you philosophically see your role and hers. Is it possible that she has slowed down because she isn't happy there, or is this due to training and management? Do you see her as the employee and you as the manager? If so, then the appropriate level of management is to provide all the resources they need, identify where her performance is lacking, set clear expectations with time goals that are reasonable, and then proceed towards disciplinary-like action if she cannot meet or exceed your standards. Do you see her as a student and you as her coach/guide/advisor? Then the strategies are similar, but ultimately very different in approach. Equally as important, how does she see this dynamic? Does this dynamic align with why she even came to grad school? Because if she expected a coach/guide/advisor and instead has a manager, then of course she would be slow and resistive. There are so many ways to approach management and coaching... and it's your choice on how to approach your own lab. But I would say this: Do you think she came to graduate school to do a slow and piss-poor job? Obviously not. So why would she act this way? Address the issue; ask her directly. I don't think anyone comes to grad school with the goal of being a bad student. We come because we hope to be successful at whatever it is we are after. We all tend to work hard and do our best when there is strong support and we feel valued. And we tend to slow down and do poorly when we feel as if we're just a cog and a technician doing someone's bidding. | 1 | 1,147 | 10.333333 |
vxjo08 | askacademia_train | 0.93 | How to talk to a grad student about productivity issues? I'm paying one of my grad students for 40 hours of work per week, and I feel like I'm getting barely half of that. How do I politely approach her on this subject without sounding like I'm micromanaging? I'm fairly new to academia, so I haven't really had to deal with this before. Most of what she's currently working on is funded from an internal pot of money, so it's not like she's missing external deadlines from sponsors. I will tell her that I want a certain model estimated by so-and-so, and when that time comes she'll tell me that she was having issues with the software, or the model was giving errors, or that it's taking longer to converge than she expected. I.e., nothing I can definitively call her out on. This is a PhD student entering her third year, and I'm worried that she's slipping. I just don't know how to broach this respectfully. | ifwv0hg | ifwva0l | 1,657,662,625 | 1,657,662,731 | 6 | 33 | As a manager, the big issue I see with your student's work, based on your description, boils down to communication. Sometimes things take longer than expected. But when that happens, she should come to you, as far in advance of the deadline as possible, and tell you that she is likely going to miss the deadline, what difficulties she is running into, what she plans to do about it, and what a revised timeline will likely be. We can't always meet deadlines. That's just reality. But we can tell in advance when we won't be able to meet a deadline, and it is our responsibility to let those in charge know BEFORE the deadline arrives. It is also our responsibility to provide updated timelines, details about why things are taking longer, and a solution oriented plan for how we will get things back on track. Doing this is a big part of being a professional, regardless of the type of work. I would focus on this when you talk with her. She should come to you with problems earlier. She should not wait until the deadline to speak up. Fixing the communication issue will fix other issues. Is she hitting a brick wall figuring out something new? If so, she can bring it up with you early, you'll know about it, and you can help her. Do things just take her longer than you both expect? You'll get a window into why that is. Is she not putting in the hours she needs to? There's no excuse for saying it's not done on the day it's due. She will need details, earlier in the process, to excuse not getting it done, and she won't have those if she doesn't put in the time. | I think a simple, informal (but not unprepared) conversation would go a long way. It sounds like you've already identified issues or areas of concern from your point of view. Before you list these out to her, ask her questions along the lines of: * How do you feel about your current workload? * What kind of obstacles have you recently faced? * Are there any areas you feel you need more support? This gives her the opportunity to lead the discussion, and thus not feel as if she is being micromanaged. If she opens up about issues she is having (either with the work itself, or something external that is impacting her performance), you can offer support and potential solutions. If she doesn't offer anything up, you can then provide her with your concerns and ask her to respond and help to formulate a plan to rectify these issues. | 0 | 106 | 5.5 |
vxjo08 | askacademia_train | 0.93 | How to talk to a grad student about productivity issues? I'm paying one of my grad students for 40 hours of work per week, and I feel like I'm getting barely half of that. How do I politely approach her on this subject without sounding like I'm micromanaging? I'm fairly new to academia, so I haven't really had to deal with this before. Most of what she's currently working on is funded from an internal pot of money, so it's not like she's missing external deadlines from sponsors. I will tell her that I want a certain model estimated by so-and-so, and when that time comes she'll tell me that she was having issues with the software, or the model was giving errors, or that it's taking longer to converge than she expected. I.e., nothing I can definitively call her out on. This is a PhD student entering her third year, and I'm worried that she's slipping. I just don't know how to broach this respectfully. | ifwrur1 | ifwva0l | 1,657,661,349 | 1,657,662,731 | 4 | 33 | Is this dissertation -related work or is it an RAship on a project external to her dissertation work? | I think a simple, informal (but not unprepared) conversation would go a long way. It sounds like you've already identified issues or areas of concern from your point of view. Before you list these out to her, ask her questions along the lines of: * How do you feel about your current workload? * What kind of obstacles have you recently faced? * Are there any areas you feel you need more support? This gives her the opportunity to lead the discussion, and thus not feel as if she is being micromanaged. If she opens up about issues she is having (either with the work itself, or something external that is impacting her performance), you can offer support and potential solutions. If she doesn't offer anything up, you can then provide her with your concerns and ask her to respond and help to formulate a plan to rectify these issues. | 0 | 1,382 | 8.25 |
vxjo08 | askacademia_train | 0.93 | How to talk to a grad student about productivity issues? I'm paying one of my grad students for 40 hours of work per week, and I feel like I'm getting barely half of that. How do I politely approach her on this subject without sounding like I'm micromanaging? I'm fairly new to academia, so I haven't really had to deal with this before. Most of what she's currently working on is funded from an internal pot of money, so it's not like she's missing external deadlines from sponsors. I will tell her that I want a certain model estimated by so-and-so, and when that time comes she'll tell me that she was having issues with the software, or the model was giving errors, or that it's taking longer to converge than she expected. I.e., nothing I can definitively call her out on. This is a PhD student entering her third year, and I'm worried that she's slipping. I just don't know how to broach this respectfully. | ifwlua7 | ifwva0l | 1,657,658,974 | 1,657,662,731 | 3 | 33 | Just keep it to the facts. She isn't meeting deadlines. This needs to be fixed. Does she need help with modeling because you're finding errors. etc. | I think a simple, informal (but not unprepared) conversation would go a long way. It sounds like you've already identified issues or areas of concern from your point of view. Before you list these out to her, ask her questions along the lines of: * How do you feel about your current workload? * What kind of obstacles have you recently faced? * Are there any areas you feel you need more support? This gives her the opportunity to lead the discussion, and thus not feel as if she is being micromanaged. If she opens up about issues she is having (either with the work itself, or something external that is impacting her performance), you can offer support and potential solutions. If she doesn't offer anything up, you can then provide her with your concerns and ask her to respond and help to formulate a plan to rectify these issues. | 0 | 3,757 | 11 |
vxjo08 | askacademia_train | 0.93 | How to talk to a grad student about productivity issues? I'm paying one of my grad students for 40 hours of work per week, and I feel like I'm getting barely half of that. How do I politely approach her on this subject without sounding like I'm micromanaging? I'm fairly new to academia, so I haven't really had to deal with this before. Most of what she's currently working on is funded from an internal pot of money, so it's not like she's missing external deadlines from sponsors. I will tell her that I want a certain model estimated by so-and-so, and when that time comes she'll tell me that she was having issues with the software, or the model was giving errors, or that it's taking longer to converge than she expected. I.e., nothing I can definitively call her out on. This is a PhD student entering her third year, and I'm worried that she's slipping. I just don't know how to broach this respectfully. | ifwtxk0 | ifwrur1 | 1,657,662,190 | 1,657,661,349 | 34 | 4 | Check health and welfare before performance management | Is this dissertation -related work or is it an RAship on a project external to her dissertation work? | 1 | 841 | 8.5 |
vxjo08 | askacademia_train | 0.93 | How to talk to a grad student about productivity issues? I'm paying one of my grad students for 40 hours of work per week, and I feel like I'm getting barely half of that. How do I politely approach her on this subject without sounding like I'm micromanaging? I'm fairly new to academia, so I haven't really had to deal with this before. Most of what she's currently working on is funded from an internal pot of money, so it's not like she's missing external deadlines from sponsors. I will tell her that I want a certain model estimated by so-and-so, and when that time comes she'll tell me that she was having issues with the software, or the model was giving errors, or that it's taking longer to converge than she expected. I.e., nothing I can definitively call her out on. This is a PhD student entering her third year, and I'm worried that she's slipping. I just don't know how to broach this respectfully. | ifwlua7 | ifwtxk0 | 1,657,658,974 | 1,657,662,190 | 3 | 34 | Just keep it to the facts. She isn't meeting deadlines. This needs to be fixed. Does she need help with modeling because you're finding errors. etc. | Check health and welfare before performance management | 0 | 3,216 | 11.333333 |
vxjo08 | askacademia_train | 0.93 | How to talk to a grad student about productivity issues? I'm paying one of my grad students for 40 hours of work per week, and I feel like I'm getting barely half of that. How do I politely approach her on this subject without sounding like I'm micromanaging? I'm fairly new to academia, so I haven't really had to deal with this before. Most of what she's currently working on is funded from an internal pot of money, so it's not like she's missing external deadlines from sponsors. I will tell her that I want a certain model estimated by so-and-so, and when that time comes she'll tell me that she was having issues with the software, or the model was giving errors, or that it's taking longer to converge than she expected. I.e., nothing I can definitively call her out on. This is a PhD student entering her third year, and I'm worried that she's slipping. I just don't know how to broach this respectfully. | ifx4v4q | ifx7s1c | 1,657,666,830 | 1,657,668,092 | 13 | 18 | Are you a professor that works primarily in computation and software development? If not, I would suggest highly that you speak with multiple colleagues who are before progressing. As someone who does computational work, I've always found colleagues involved in more experimental work to be extremely frustrating in their expectations of things, and I have seen the same sentiment from others as well. If you would not be capable of independently putting together the whole project yourself in short order, I would be wary of being overly critical of a new student doing the same thing likely for the first time. That being said, students can of course be lazy (or burned out) at times. There are some ways you can alleviate this. If it's possible she's furiously spinning her wheels, this is probably a sign you aren't mentoring/teaching her enough, and that you're leaving someone to be independent who isn't quite ready to be. Poor mentorship is something I've often seen. It could also be a motivation issue. One other piece of advice that would be easily verifiable for you, is to insist on your student keeping a journal of sorts, where at the end of every working period (whether this is like a regular 9-5 or some other arrangement depends on you two), she writes down a short summary of what she did that day and any notes to herself the next day. I've done this myself at times and it does help with focus, particularly over weekends or breaks where I've somewhat forgotten where exactly I was. Then you'd also be able to see whether or not she has been slacking, and if she is lying with excuses, it makes it very easy to call out. | IMO you should look at your mentoring skills. You should see her motivation and progress as at least partially your responsibility. | 0 | 1,262 | 1.384615 |
vxjo08 | askacademia_train | 0.93 | How to talk to a grad student about productivity issues? I'm paying one of my grad students for 40 hours of work per week, and I feel like I'm getting barely half of that. How do I politely approach her on this subject without sounding like I'm micromanaging? I'm fairly new to academia, so I haven't really had to deal with this before. Most of what she's currently working on is funded from an internal pot of money, so it's not like she's missing external deadlines from sponsors. I will tell her that I want a certain model estimated by so-and-so, and when that time comes she'll tell me that she was having issues with the software, or the model was giving errors, or that it's taking longer to converge than she expected. I.e., nothing I can definitively call her out on. This is a PhD student entering her third year, and I'm worried that she's slipping. I just don't know how to broach this respectfully. | ifx7s1c | ifx319a | 1,657,668,092 | 1,657,666,050 | 18 | 11 | IMO you should look at your mentoring skills. You should see her motivation and progress as at least partially your responsibility. | Sounds like you might be seeing the outcome of other factors in her life. It may be helpful to consider that this person my be in crisis in life outside of her work and may need support, resources, or someone to be there for her. I’m not saying that you are not providing these things but grad school is a psychological beating (on top of balancing life events) and it is much harder than profs often remember. If you can check in with these factors first the conversation about productivity may not even need to happen! I certainly would not recommend combining the two conversations but if productivity is still an issue after addressing her as a person then a separate conversation is okay. For the record I have been on the other end of this same conversation (the productivity one) at a time when my life was falling to pieces in the background. It was a horrible experience because I was not doing well but didn’t not feel that I could say anything. The professor took the same attitude of “slipping” and led me to feel that I was replaceable and perhaps didn’t have what it takes. That was also one of those departments that often says, “maybe this isn’t the right time for a PhD” as if life is predictable and simple. I am not saying let her productivity issues go. Maybe just consider that issues outside of her “slipping” might be at play in the change in productivity. Hope this helps. | 1 | 2,042 | 1.636364 |
vxjo08 | askacademia_train | 0.93 | How to talk to a grad student about productivity issues? I'm paying one of my grad students for 40 hours of work per week, and I feel like I'm getting barely half of that. How do I politely approach her on this subject without sounding like I'm micromanaging? I'm fairly new to academia, so I haven't really had to deal with this before. Most of what she's currently working on is funded from an internal pot of money, so it's not like she's missing external deadlines from sponsors. I will tell her that I want a certain model estimated by so-and-so, and when that time comes she'll tell me that she was having issues with the software, or the model was giving errors, or that it's taking longer to converge than she expected. I.e., nothing I can definitively call her out on. This is a PhD student entering her third year, and I'm worried that she's slipping. I just don't know how to broach this respectfully. | ifwvjx6 | ifx7s1c | 1,657,662,840 | 1,657,668,092 | 10 | 18 | I typed this as a reply to /u/the_y_files but decided to leave it as a top level comment so you would be sure to see it. You can try to get to the bottom of what is causing her slowness by having her let you know as soon as she knows she's not going to make the deadline and why. Depending on when you hear from her and about what, it becomes clear extremely quickly whether she's 1) running into legitimate problems, 2) underperforming despite diligence, or 3) slacking off. You could also use more of a shared decision making model for deadlines, so when a deadline changes, it is also on her for having misestimated. This has the bonus of making her a better project manager which will be an excellent skill for most any early-career job she ends up in after her PhD. It may also be worth having a separate meeting to frankly say to her that you were hoping that she'd be producing work at a faster pace by this point in her training than she is and open a dialogue about what she thinks she needs from you to improve. Even though you suspect that slacking may be a contributing factor, you should come at this with the benefit of the doubt that it's a competence issue and with the humility to accept that the problem may be you having unrealistic expectations for what an *average* 3rd year PhD student can produce. | IMO you should look at your mentoring skills. You should see her motivation and progress as at least partially your responsibility. | 0 | 5,252 | 1.8 |
vxjo08 | askacademia_train | 0.93 | How to talk to a grad student about productivity issues? I'm paying one of my grad students for 40 hours of work per week, and I feel like I'm getting barely half of that. How do I politely approach her on this subject without sounding like I'm micromanaging? I'm fairly new to academia, so I haven't really had to deal with this before. Most of what she's currently working on is funded from an internal pot of money, so it's not like she's missing external deadlines from sponsors. I will tell her that I want a certain model estimated by so-and-so, and when that time comes she'll tell me that she was having issues with the software, or the model was giving errors, or that it's taking longer to converge than she expected. I.e., nothing I can definitively call her out on. This is a PhD student entering her third year, and I'm worried that she's slipping. I just don't know how to broach this respectfully. | ifx7s1c | ifx2dnx | 1,657,668,092 | 1,657,665,771 | 18 | 8 | IMO you should look at your mentoring skills. You should see her motivation and progress as at least partially your responsibility. | How often do you have check ins? I will typically alert my PI the instant I realize that I won’t be able to meet a deadline or set up a model appropriately (like if I’m missing a variable in my version of the dataset). It could be that she isn’t flagging issues like this as often as you would like. Or that things take her longer to do than you would expect — and maybe you could be providing some pedagogy of your own there, to help her overcome roadblocks ? | 1 | 2,321 | 2.25 |
vxjo08 | askacademia_train | 0.93 | How to talk to a grad student about productivity issues? I'm paying one of my grad students for 40 hours of work per week, and I feel like I'm getting barely half of that. How do I politely approach her on this subject without sounding like I'm micromanaging? I'm fairly new to academia, so I haven't really had to deal with this before. Most of what she's currently working on is funded from an internal pot of money, so it's not like she's missing external deadlines from sponsors. I will tell her that I want a certain model estimated by so-and-so, and when that time comes she'll tell me that she was having issues with the software, or the model was giving errors, or that it's taking longer to converge than she expected. I.e., nothing I can definitively call her out on. This is a PhD student entering her third year, and I'm worried that she's slipping. I just don't know how to broach this respectfully. | ifx7s1c | ifwv0hg | 1,657,668,092 | 1,657,662,625 | 18 | 6 | IMO you should look at your mentoring skills. You should see her motivation and progress as at least partially your responsibility. | As a manager, the big issue I see with your student's work, based on your description, boils down to communication. Sometimes things take longer than expected. But when that happens, she should come to you, as far in advance of the deadline as possible, and tell you that she is likely going to miss the deadline, what difficulties she is running into, what she plans to do about it, and what a revised timeline will likely be. We can't always meet deadlines. That's just reality. But we can tell in advance when we won't be able to meet a deadline, and it is our responsibility to let those in charge know BEFORE the deadline arrives. It is also our responsibility to provide updated timelines, details about why things are taking longer, and a solution oriented plan for how we will get things back on track. Doing this is a big part of being a professional, regardless of the type of work. I would focus on this when you talk with her. She should come to you with problems earlier. She should not wait until the deadline to speak up. Fixing the communication issue will fix other issues. Is she hitting a brick wall figuring out something new? If so, she can bring it up with you early, you'll know about it, and you can help her. Do things just take her longer than you both expect? You'll get a window into why that is. Is she not putting in the hours she needs to? There's no excuse for saying it's not done on the day it's due. She will need details, earlier in the process, to excuse not getting it done, and she won't have those if she doesn't put in the time. | 1 | 5,467 | 3 |
vxjo08 | askacademia_train | 0.93 | How to talk to a grad student about productivity issues? I'm paying one of my grad students for 40 hours of work per week, and I feel like I'm getting barely half of that. How do I politely approach her on this subject without sounding like I'm micromanaging? I'm fairly new to academia, so I haven't really had to deal with this before. Most of what she's currently working on is funded from an internal pot of money, so it's not like she's missing external deadlines from sponsors. I will tell her that I want a certain model estimated by so-and-so, and when that time comes she'll tell me that she was having issues with the software, or the model was giving errors, or that it's taking longer to converge than she expected. I.e., nothing I can definitively call her out on. This is a PhD student entering her third year, and I'm worried that she's slipping. I just don't know how to broach this respectfully. | ifwrur1 | ifx7s1c | 1,657,661,349 | 1,657,668,092 | 4 | 18 | Is this dissertation -related work or is it an RAship on a project external to her dissertation work? | IMO you should look at your mentoring skills. You should see her motivation and progress as at least partially your responsibility. | 0 | 6,743 | 4.5 |
vxjo08 | askacademia_train | 0.93 | How to talk to a grad student about productivity issues? I'm paying one of my grad students for 40 hours of work per week, and I feel like I'm getting barely half of that. How do I politely approach her on this subject without sounding like I'm micromanaging? I'm fairly new to academia, so I haven't really had to deal with this before. Most of what she's currently working on is funded from an internal pot of money, so it's not like she's missing external deadlines from sponsors. I will tell her that I want a certain model estimated by so-and-so, and when that time comes she'll tell me that she was having issues with the software, or the model was giving errors, or that it's taking longer to converge than she expected. I.e., nothing I can definitively call her out on. This is a PhD student entering her third year, and I'm worried that she's slipping. I just don't know how to broach this respectfully. | ifx7s1c | ifwlua7 | 1,657,668,092 | 1,657,658,974 | 18 | 3 | IMO you should look at your mentoring skills. You should see her motivation and progress as at least partially your responsibility. | Just keep it to the facts. She isn't meeting deadlines. This needs to be fixed. Does she need help with modeling because you're finding errors. etc. | 1 | 9,118 | 6 |
vxjo08 | askacademia_train | 0.93 | How to talk to a grad student about productivity issues? I'm paying one of my grad students for 40 hours of work per week, and I feel like I'm getting barely half of that. How do I politely approach her on this subject without sounding like I'm micromanaging? I'm fairly new to academia, so I haven't really had to deal with this before. Most of what she's currently working on is funded from an internal pot of money, so it's not like she's missing external deadlines from sponsors. I will tell her that I want a certain model estimated by so-and-so, and when that time comes she'll tell me that she was having issues with the software, or the model was giving errors, or that it's taking longer to converge than she expected. I.e., nothing I can definitively call her out on. This is a PhD student entering her third year, and I'm worried that she's slipping. I just don't know how to broach this respectfully. | ifx4oli | ifx7s1c | 1,657,666,752 | 1,657,668,092 | 4 | 18 | >paying one of my grad students for 40 hours of work per week, and I feel like I'm getting barely half of that >PhD student entering her third year I'm guessing she's done with coursework and teaching requirements? Has she passed the qualifying exam or is some of her attention and focus needed there? Does she have a dissertation committee that requires regular meetings? I remember that when I was in grad school I had to present every 6-12 months, depending on how far in I was, for the committee to evaluate the student's progression towards completion. If there's a meeting coming up soon, that can be a topic to discuss with the other members and then address with the student. >having issues with the software, or the model was giving errors, or that it's taking longer to converge than she expected. I mean, that's sometimes how it is. If it seems that there are consistent problems in a certain area, like programming to adjust the model or a lack of important skills/knowledge, then reach out to colleagues/collaborators to arrange for additional training and/or mentorship so that she is better prepared to overcome these hurdles and can do so more quickly. | IMO you should look at your mentoring skills. You should see her motivation and progress as at least partially your responsibility. | 0 | 1,340 | 4.5 |
vxjo08 | askacademia_train | 0.93 | How to talk to a grad student about productivity issues? I'm paying one of my grad students for 40 hours of work per week, and I feel like I'm getting barely half of that. How do I politely approach her on this subject without sounding like I'm micromanaging? I'm fairly new to academia, so I haven't really had to deal with this before. Most of what she's currently working on is funded from an internal pot of money, so it's not like she's missing external deadlines from sponsors. I will tell her that I want a certain model estimated by so-and-so, and when that time comes she'll tell me that she was having issues with the software, or the model was giving errors, or that it's taking longer to converge than she expected. I.e., nothing I can definitively call her out on. This is a PhD student entering her third year, and I'm worried that she's slipping. I just don't know how to broach this respectfully. | ifx6o6b | ifx7s1c | 1,657,667,611 | 1,657,668,092 | 3 | 18 | I think the answer completely depends on how you philosophically see your role and hers. Is it possible that she has slowed down because she isn't happy there, or is this due to training and management? Do you see her as the employee and you as the manager? If so, then the appropriate level of management is to provide all the resources they need, identify where her performance is lacking, set clear expectations with time goals that are reasonable, and then proceed towards disciplinary-like action if she cannot meet or exceed your standards. Do you see her as a student and you as her coach/guide/advisor? Then the strategies are similar, but ultimately very different in approach. Equally as important, how does she see this dynamic? Does this dynamic align with why she even came to grad school? Because if she expected a coach/guide/advisor and instead has a manager, then of course she would be slow and resistive. There are so many ways to approach management and coaching... and it's your choice on how to approach your own lab. But I would say this: Do you think she came to graduate school to do a slow and piss-poor job? Obviously not. So why would she act this way? Address the issue; ask her directly. I don't think anyone comes to grad school with the goal of being a bad student. We come because we hope to be successful at whatever it is we are after. We all tend to work hard and do our best when there is strong support and we feel valued. And we tend to slow down and do poorly when we feel as if we're just a cog and a technician doing someone's bidding. | IMO you should look at your mentoring skills. You should see her motivation and progress as at least partially your responsibility. | 0 | 481 | 6 |
vxjo08 | askacademia_train | 0.93 | How to talk to a grad student about productivity issues? I'm paying one of my grad students for 40 hours of work per week, and I feel like I'm getting barely half of that. How do I politely approach her on this subject without sounding like I'm micromanaging? I'm fairly new to academia, so I haven't really had to deal with this before. Most of what she's currently working on is funded from an internal pot of money, so it's not like she's missing external deadlines from sponsors. I will tell her that I want a certain model estimated by so-and-so, and when that time comes she'll tell me that she was having issues with the software, or the model was giving errors, or that it's taking longer to converge than she expected. I.e., nothing I can definitively call her out on. This is a PhD student entering her third year, and I'm worried that she's slipping. I just don't know how to broach this respectfully. | ifx4v4q | ifx319a | 1,657,666,830 | 1,657,666,050 | 13 | 11 | Are you a professor that works primarily in computation and software development? If not, I would suggest highly that you speak with multiple colleagues who are before progressing. As someone who does computational work, I've always found colleagues involved in more experimental work to be extremely frustrating in their expectations of things, and I have seen the same sentiment from others as well. If you would not be capable of independently putting together the whole project yourself in short order, I would be wary of being overly critical of a new student doing the same thing likely for the first time. That being said, students can of course be lazy (or burned out) at times. There are some ways you can alleviate this. If it's possible she's furiously spinning her wheels, this is probably a sign you aren't mentoring/teaching her enough, and that you're leaving someone to be independent who isn't quite ready to be. Poor mentorship is something I've often seen. It could also be a motivation issue. One other piece of advice that would be easily verifiable for you, is to insist on your student keeping a journal of sorts, where at the end of every working period (whether this is like a regular 9-5 or some other arrangement depends on you two), she writes down a short summary of what she did that day and any notes to herself the next day. I've done this myself at times and it does help with focus, particularly over weekends or breaks where I've somewhat forgotten where exactly I was. Then you'd also be able to see whether or not she has been slacking, and if she is lying with excuses, it makes it very easy to call out. | Sounds like you might be seeing the outcome of other factors in her life. It may be helpful to consider that this person my be in crisis in life outside of her work and may need support, resources, or someone to be there for her. I’m not saying that you are not providing these things but grad school is a psychological beating (on top of balancing life events) and it is much harder than profs often remember. If you can check in with these factors first the conversation about productivity may not even need to happen! I certainly would not recommend combining the two conversations but if productivity is still an issue after addressing her as a person then a separate conversation is okay. For the record I have been on the other end of this same conversation (the productivity one) at a time when my life was falling to pieces in the background. It was a horrible experience because I was not doing well but didn’t not feel that I could say anything. The professor took the same attitude of “slipping” and led me to feel that I was replaceable and perhaps didn’t have what it takes. That was also one of those departments that often says, “maybe this isn’t the right time for a PhD” as if life is predictable and simple. I am not saying let her productivity issues go. Maybe just consider that issues outside of her “slipping” might be at play in the change in productivity. Hope this helps. | 1 | 780 | 1.181818 |
vxjo08 | askacademia_train | 0.93 | How to talk to a grad student about productivity issues? I'm paying one of my grad students for 40 hours of work per week, and I feel like I'm getting barely half of that. How do I politely approach her on this subject without sounding like I'm micromanaging? I'm fairly new to academia, so I haven't really had to deal with this before. Most of what she's currently working on is funded from an internal pot of money, so it's not like she's missing external deadlines from sponsors. I will tell her that I want a certain model estimated by so-and-so, and when that time comes she'll tell me that she was having issues with the software, or the model was giving errors, or that it's taking longer to converge than she expected. I.e., nothing I can definitively call her out on. This is a PhD student entering her third year, and I'm worried that she's slipping. I just don't know how to broach this respectfully. | ifx4v4q | ifwvjx6 | 1,657,666,830 | 1,657,662,840 | 13 | 10 | Are you a professor that works primarily in computation and software development? If not, I would suggest highly that you speak with multiple colleagues who are before progressing. As someone who does computational work, I've always found colleagues involved in more experimental work to be extremely frustrating in their expectations of things, and I have seen the same sentiment from others as well. If you would not be capable of independently putting together the whole project yourself in short order, I would be wary of being overly critical of a new student doing the same thing likely for the first time. That being said, students can of course be lazy (or burned out) at times. There are some ways you can alleviate this. If it's possible she's furiously spinning her wheels, this is probably a sign you aren't mentoring/teaching her enough, and that you're leaving someone to be independent who isn't quite ready to be. Poor mentorship is something I've often seen. It could also be a motivation issue. One other piece of advice that would be easily verifiable for you, is to insist on your student keeping a journal of sorts, where at the end of every working period (whether this is like a regular 9-5 or some other arrangement depends on you two), she writes down a short summary of what she did that day and any notes to herself the next day. I've done this myself at times and it does help with focus, particularly over weekends or breaks where I've somewhat forgotten where exactly I was. Then you'd also be able to see whether or not she has been slacking, and if she is lying with excuses, it makes it very easy to call out. | I typed this as a reply to /u/the_y_files but decided to leave it as a top level comment so you would be sure to see it. You can try to get to the bottom of what is causing her slowness by having her let you know as soon as she knows she's not going to make the deadline and why. Depending on when you hear from her and about what, it becomes clear extremely quickly whether she's 1) running into legitimate problems, 2) underperforming despite diligence, or 3) slacking off. You could also use more of a shared decision making model for deadlines, so when a deadline changes, it is also on her for having misestimated. This has the bonus of making her a better project manager which will be an excellent skill for most any early-career job she ends up in after her PhD. It may also be worth having a separate meeting to frankly say to her that you were hoping that she'd be producing work at a faster pace by this point in her training than she is and open a dialogue about what she thinks she needs from you to improve. Even though you suspect that slacking may be a contributing factor, you should come at this with the benefit of the doubt that it's a competence issue and with the humility to accept that the problem may be you having unrealistic expectations for what an *average* 3rd year PhD student can produce. | 1 | 3,990 | 1.3 |
vxjo08 | askacademia_train | 0.93 | How to talk to a grad student about productivity issues? I'm paying one of my grad students for 40 hours of work per week, and I feel like I'm getting barely half of that. How do I politely approach her on this subject without sounding like I'm micromanaging? I'm fairly new to academia, so I haven't really had to deal with this before. Most of what she's currently working on is funded from an internal pot of money, so it's not like she's missing external deadlines from sponsors. I will tell her that I want a certain model estimated by so-and-so, and when that time comes she'll tell me that she was having issues with the software, or the model was giving errors, or that it's taking longer to converge than she expected. I.e., nothing I can definitively call her out on. This is a PhD student entering her third year, and I'm worried that she's slipping. I just don't know how to broach this respectfully. | ifx2dnx | ifx4v4q | 1,657,665,771 | 1,657,666,830 | 8 | 13 | How often do you have check ins? I will typically alert my PI the instant I realize that I won’t be able to meet a deadline or set up a model appropriately (like if I’m missing a variable in my version of the dataset). It could be that she isn’t flagging issues like this as often as you would like. Or that things take her longer to do than you would expect — and maybe you could be providing some pedagogy of your own there, to help her overcome roadblocks ? | Are you a professor that works primarily in computation and software development? If not, I would suggest highly that you speak with multiple colleagues who are before progressing. As someone who does computational work, I've always found colleagues involved in more experimental work to be extremely frustrating in their expectations of things, and I have seen the same sentiment from others as well. If you would not be capable of independently putting together the whole project yourself in short order, I would be wary of being overly critical of a new student doing the same thing likely for the first time. That being said, students can of course be lazy (or burned out) at times. There are some ways you can alleviate this. If it's possible she's furiously spinning her wheels, this is probably a sign you aren't mentoring/teaching her enough, and that you're leaving someone to be independent who isn't quite ready to be. Poor mentorship is something I've often seen. It could also be a motivation issue. One other piece of advice that would be easily verifiable for you, is to insist on your student keeping a journal of sorts, where at the end of every working period (whether this is like a regular 9-5 or some other arrangement depends on you two), she writes down a short summary of what she did that day and any notes to herself the next day. I've done this myself at times and it does help with focus, particularly over weekends or breaks where I've somewhat forgotten where exactly I was. Then you'd also be able to see whether or not she has been slacking, and if she is lying with excuses, it makes it very easy to call out. | 0 | 1,059 | 1.625 |
vxjo08 | askacademia_train | 0.93 | How to talk to a grad student about productivity issues? I'm paying one of my grad students for 40 hours of work per week, and I feel like I'm getting barely half of that. How do I politely approach her on this subject without sounding like I'm micromanaging? I'm fairly new to academia, so I haven't really had to deal with this before. Most of what she's currently working on is funded from an internal pot of money, so it's not like she's missing external deadlines from sponsors. I will tell her that I want a certain model estimated by so-and-so, and when that time comes she'll tell me that she was having issues with the software, or the model was giving errors, or that it's taking longer to converge than she expected. I.e., nothing I can definitively call her out on. This is a PhD student entering her third year, and I'm worried that she's slipping. I just don't know how to broach this respectfully. | ifx4v4q | ifwv0hg | 1,657,666,830 | 1,657,662,625 | 13 | 6 | Are you a professor that works primarily in computation and software development? If not, I would suggest highly that you speak with multiple colleagues who are before progressing. As someone who does computational work, I've always found colleagues involved in more experimental work to be extremely frustrating in their expectations of things, and I have seen the same sentiment from others as well. If you would not be capable of independently putting together the whole project yourself in short order, I would be wary of being overly critical of a new student doing the same thing likely for the first time. That being said, students can of course be lazy (or burned out) at times. There are some ways you can alleviate this. If it's possible she's furiously spinning her wheels, this is probably a sign you aren't mentoring/teaching her enough, and that you're leaving someone to be independent who isn't quite ready to be. Poor mentorship is something I've often seen. It could also be a motivation issue. One other piece of advice that would be easily verifiable for you, is to insist on your student keeping a journal of sorts, where at the end of every working period (whether this is like a regular 9-5 or some other arrangement depends on you two), she writes down a short summary of what she did that day and any notes to herself the next day. I've done this myself at times and it does help with focus, particularly over weekends or breaks where I've somewhat forgotten where exactly I was. Then you'd also be able to see whether or not she has been slacking, and if she is lying with excuses, it makes it very easy to call out. | As a manager, the big issue I see with your student's work, based on your description, boils down to communication. Sometimes things take longer than expected. But when that happens, she should come to you, as far in advance of the deadline as possible, and tell you that she is likely going to miss the deadline, what difficulties she is running into, what she plans to do about it, and what a revised timeline will likely be. We can't always meet deadlines. That's just reality. But we can tell in advance when we won't be able to meet a deadline, and it is our responsibility to let those in charge know BEFORE the deadline arrives. It is also our responsibility to provide updated timelines, details about why things are taking longer, and a solution oriented plan for how we will get things back on track. Doing this is a big part of being a professional, regardless of the type of work. I would focus on this when you talk with her. She should come to you with problems earlier. She should not wait until the deadline to speak up. Fixing the communication issue will fix other issues. Is she hitting a brick wall figuring out something new? If so, she can bring it up with you early, you'll know about it, and you can help her. Do things just take her longer than you both expect? You'll get a window into why that is. Is she not putting in the hours she needs to? There's no excuse for saying it's not done on the day it's due. She will need details, earlier in the process, to excuse not getting it done, and she won't have those if she doesn't put in the time. | 1 | 4,205 | 2.166667 |
vxjo08 | askacademia_train | 0.93 | How to talk to a grad student about productivity issues? I'm paying one of my grad students for 40 hours of work per week, and I feel like I'm getting barely half of that. How do I politely approach her on this subject without sounding like I'm micromanaging? I'm fairly new to academia, so I haven't really had to deal with this before. Most of what she's currently working on is funded from an internal pot of money, so it's not like she's missing external deadlines from sponsors. I will tell her that I want a certain model estimated by so-and-so, and when that time comes she'll tell me that she was having issues with the software, or the model was giving errors, or that it's taking longer to converge than she expected. I.e., nothing I can definitively call her out on. This is a PhD student entering her third year, and I'm worried that she's slipping. I just don't know how to broach this respectfully. | ifwrur1 | ifx4v4q | 1,657,661,349 | 1,657,666,830 | 4 | 13 | Is this dissertation -related work or is it an RAship on a project external to her dissertation work? | Are you a professor that works primarily in computation and software development? If not, I would suggest highly that you speak with multiple colleagues who are before progressing. As someone who does computational work, I've always found colleagues involved in more experimental work to be extremely frustrating in their expectations of things, and I have seen the same sentiment from others as well. If you would not be capable of independently putting together the whole project yourself in short order, I would be wary of being overly critical of a new student doing the same thing likely for the first time. That being said, students can of course be lazy (or burned out) at times. There are some ways you can alleviate this. If it's possible she's furiously spinning her wheels, this is probably a sign you aren't mentoring/teaching her enough, and that you're leaving someone to be independent who isn't quite ready to be. Poor mentorship is something I've often seen. It could also be a motivation issue. One other piece of advice that would be easily verifiable for you, is to insist on your student keeping a journal of sorts, where at the end of every working period (whether this is like a regular 9-5 or some other arrangement depends on you two), she writes down a short summary of what she did that day and any notes to herself the next day. I've done this myself at times and it does help with focus, particularly over weekends or breaks where I've somewhat forgotten where exactly I was. Then you'd also be able to see whether or not she has been slacking, and if she is lying with excuses, it makes it very easy to call out. | 0 | 5,481 | 3.25 |
vxjo08 | askacademia_train | 0.93 | How to talk to a grad student about productivity issues? I'm paying one of my grad students for 40 hours of work per week, and I feel like I'm getting barely half of that. How do I politely approach her on this subject without sounding like I'm micromanaging? I'm fairly new to academia, so I haven't really had to deal with this before. Most of what she's currently working on is funded from an internal pot of money, so it's not like she's missing external deadlines from sponsors. I will tell her that I want a certain model estimated by so-and-so, and when that time comes she'll tell me that she was having issues with the software, or the model was giving errors, or that it's taking longer to converge than she expected. I.e., nothing I can definitively call her out on. This is a PhD student entering her third year, and I'm worried that she's slipping. I just don't know how to broach this respectfully. | ifwlua7 | ifx4v4q | 1,657,658,974 | 1,657,666,830 | 3 | 13 | Just keep it to the facts. She isn't meeting deadlines. This needs to be fixed. Does she need help with modeling because you're finding errors. etc. | Are you a professor that works primarily in computation and software development? If not, I would suggest highly that you speak with multiple colleagues who are before progressing. As someone who does computational work, I've always found colleagues involved in more experimental work to be extremely frustrating in their expectations of things, and I have seen the same sentiment from others as well. If you would not be capable of independently putting together the whole project yourself in short order, I would be wary of being overly critical of a new student doing the same thing likely for the first time. That being said, students can of course be lazy (or burned out) at times. There are some ways you can alleviate this. If it's possible she's furiously spinning her wheels, this is probably a sign you aren't mentoring/teaching her enough, and that you're leaving someone to be independent who isn't quite ready to be. Poor mentorship is something I've often seen. It could also be a motivation issue. One other piece of advice that would be easily verifiable for you, is to insist on your student keeping a journal of sorts, where at the end of every working period (whether this is like a regular 9-5 or some other arrangement depends on you two), she writes down a short summary of what she did that day and any notes to herself the next day. I've done this myself at times and it does help with focus, particularly over weekends or breaks where I've somewhat forgotten where exactly I was. Then you'd also be able to see whether or not she has been slacking, and if she is lying with excuses, it makes it very easy to call out. | 0 | 7,856 | 4.333333 |
vxjo08 | askacademia_train | 0.93 | How to talk to a grad student about productivity issues? I'm paying one of my grad students for 40 hours of work per week, and I feel like I'm getting barely half of that. How do I politely approach her on this subject without sounding like I'm micromanaging? I'm fairly new to academia, so I haven't really had to deal with this before. Most of what she's currently working on is funded from an internal pot of money, so it's not like she's missing external deadlines from sponsors. I will tell her that I want a certain model estimated by so-and-so, and when that time comes she'll tell me that she was having issues with the software, or the model was giving errors, or that it's taking longer to converge than she expected. I.e., nothing I can definitively call her out on. This is a PhD student entering her third year, and I'm worried that she's slipping. I just don't know how to broach this respectfully. | ifx4v4q | ifx4oli | 1,657,666,830 | 1,657,666,752 | 13 | 4 | Are you a professor that works primarily in computation and software development? If not, I would suggest highly that you speak with multiple colleagues who are before progressing. As someone who does computational work, I've always found colleagues involved in more experimental work to be extremely frustrating in their expectations of things, and I have seen the same sentiment from others as well. If you would not be capable of independently putting together the whole project yourself in short order, I would be wary of being overly critical of a new student doing the same thing likely for the first time. That being said, students can of course be lazy (or burned out) at times. There are some ways you can alleviate this. If it's possible she's furiously spinning her wheels, this is probably a sign you aren't mentoring/teaching her enough, and that you're leaving someone to be independent who isn't quite ready to be. Poor mentorship is something I've often seen. It could also be a motivation issue. One other piece of advice that would be easily verifiable for you, is to insist on your student keeping a journal of sorts, where at the end of every working period (whether this is like a regular 9-5 or some other arrangement depends on you two), she writes down a short summary of what she did that day and any notes to herself the next day. I've done this myself at times and it does help with focus, particularly over weekends or breaks where I've somewhat forgotten where exactly I was. Then you'd also be able to see whether or not she has been slacking, and if she is lying with excuses, it makes it very easy to call out. | >paying one of my grad students for 40 hours of work per week, and I feel like I'm getting barely half of that >PhD student entering her third year I'm guessing she's done with coursework and teaching requirements? Has she passed the qualifying exam or is some of her attention and focus needed there? Does she have a dissertation committee that requires regular meetings? I remember that when I was in grad school I had to present every 6-12 months, depending on how far in I was, for the committee to evaluate the student's progression towards completion. If there's a meeting coming up soon, that can be a topic to discuss with the other members and then address with the student. >having issues with the software, or the model was giving errors, or that it's taking longer to converge than she expected. I mean, that's sometimes how it is. If it seems that there are consistent problems in a certain area, like programming to adjust the model or a lack of important skills/knowledge, then reach out to colleagues/collaborators to arrange for additional training and/or mentorship so that she is better prepared to overcome these hurdles and can do so more quickly. | 1 | 78 | 3.25 |
vxjo08 | askacademia_train | 0.93 | How to talk to a grad student about productivity issues? I'm paying one of my grad students for 40 hours of work per week, and I feel like I'm getting barely half of that. How do I politely approach her on this subject without sounding like I'm micromanaging? I'm fairly new to academia, so I haven't really had to deal with this before. Most of what she's currently working on is funded from an internal pot of money, so it's not like she's missing external deadlines from sponsors. I will tell her that I want a certain model estimated by so-and-so, and when that time comes she'll tell me that she was having issues with the software, or the model was giving errors, or that it's taking longer to converge than she expected. I.e., nothing I can definitively call her out on. This is a PhD student entering her third year, and I'm worried that she's slipping. I just don't know how to broach this respectfully. | ifx319a | ifxcypv | 1,657,666,050 | 1,657,670,382 | 11 | 13 | Sounds like you might be seeing the outcome of other factors in her life. It may be helpful to consider that this person my be in crisis in life outside of her work and may need support, resources, or someone to be there for her. I’m not saying that you are not providing these things but grad school is a psychological beating (on top of balancing life events) and it is much harder than profs often remember. If you can check in with these factors first the conversation about productivity may not even need to happen! I certainly would not recommend combining the two conversations but if productivity is still an issue after addressing her as a person then a separate conversation is okay. For the record I have been on the other end of this same conversation (the productivity one) at a time when my life was falling to pieces in the background. It was a horrible experience because I was not doing well but didn’t not feel that I could say anything. The professor took the same attitude of “slipping” and led me to feel that I was replaceable and perhaps didn’t have what it takes. That was also one of those departments that often says, “maybe this isn’t the right time for a PhD” as if life is predictable and simple. I am not saying let her productivity issues go. Maybe just consider that issues outside of her “slipping” might be at play in the change in productivity. Hope this helps. | I will preface this with saying I am a grad student. Sometimes, I do feel like I am not getting enough done when issues come up. One of the things my advisor let me know was not only to talk about when it succeeded but also when something failed or was an issue. I had never encountered that way of thinking before grad school. It changed a lot for me. I now am specific about what worked and did not work. Doing this also let me get feedback and advice on what was not working so I had more success fixing it quickly. Perhaps your student does not realize she can (and should) talk about things in terms of what is working and not. Perhaps letting her know that if something is not working she should give a heads up, and have a plan of action/a few ideas on how to fix it to present as well? It sounds like she is trying, but overwhelmed or does not know how to communicate it. She is probably equally distressed about her progress. | 0 | 4,332 | 1.181818 |
vxjo08 | askacademia_train | 0.93 | How to talk to a grad student about productivity issues? I'm paying one of my grad students for 40 hours of work per week, and I feel like I'm getting barely half of that. How do I politely approach her on this subject without sounding like I'm micromanaging? I'm fairly new to academia, so I haven't really had to deal with this before. Most of what she's currently working on is funded from an internal pot of money, so it's not like she's missing external deadlines from sponsors. I will tell her that I want a certain model estimated by so-and-so, and when that time comes she'll tell me that she was having issues with the software, or the model was giving errors, or that it's taking longer to converge than she expected. I.e., nothing I can definitively call her out on. This is a PhD student entering her third year, and I'm worried that she's slipping. I just don't know how to broach this respectfully. | ifxcypv | ifwvjx6 | 1,657,670,382 | 1,657,662,840 | 13 | 10 | I will preface this with saying I am a grad student. Sometimes, I do feel like I am not getting enough done when issues come up. One of the things my advisor let me know was not only to talk about when it succeeded but also when something failed or was an issue. I had never encountered that way of thinking before grad school. It changed a lot for me. I now am specific about what worked and did not work. Doing this also let me get feedback and advice on what was not working so I had more success fixing it quickly. Perhaps your student does not realize she can (and should) talk about things in terms of what is working and not. Perhaps letting her know that if something is not working she should give a heads up, and have a plan of action/a few ideas on how to fix it to present as well? It sounds like she is trying, but overwhelmed or does not know how to communicate it. She is probably equally distressed about her progress. | I typed this as a reply to /u/the_y_files but decided to leave it as a top level comment so you would be sure to see it. You can try to get to the bottom of what is causing her slowness by having her let you know as soon as she knows she's not going to make the deadline and why. Depending on when you hear from her and about what, it becomes clear extremely quickly whether she's 1) running into legitimate problems, 2) underperforming despite diligence, or 3) slacking off. You could also use more of a shared decision making model for deadlines, so when a deadline changes, it is also on her for having misestimated. This has the bonus of making her a better project manager which will be an excellent skill for most any early-career job she ends up in after her PhD. It may also be worth having a separate meeting to frankly say to her that you were hoping that she'd be producing work at a faster pace by this point in her training than she is and open a dialogue about what she thinks she needs from you to improve. Even though you suspect that slacking may be a contributing factor, you should come at this with the benefit of the doubt that it's a competence issue and with the humility to accept that the problem may be you having unrealistic expectations for what an *average* 3rd year PhD student can produce. | 1 | 7,542 | 1.3 |
vxjo08 | askacademia_train | 0.93 | How to talk to a grad student about productivity issues? I'm paying one of my grad students for 40 hours of work per week, and I feel like I'm getting barely half of that. How do I politely approach her on this subject without sounding like I'm micromanaging? I'm fairly new to academia, so I haven't really had to deal with this before. Most of what she's currently working on is funded from an internal pot of money, so it's not like she's missing external deadlines from sponsors. I will tell her that I want a certain model estimated by so-and-so, and when that time comes she'll tell me that she was having issues with the software, or the model was giving errors, or that it's taking longer to converge than she expected. I.e., nothing I can definitively call her out on. This is a PhD student entering her third year, and I'm worried that she's slipping. I just don't know how to broach this respectfully. | ifxcypv | ifx2dnx | 1,657,670,382 | 1,657,665,771 | 13 | 8 | I will preface this with saying I am a grad student. Sometimes, I do feel like I am not getting enough done when issues come up. One of the things my advisor let me know was not only to talk about when it succeeded but also when something failed or was an issue. I had never encountered that way of thinking before grad school. It changed a lot for me. I now am specific about what worked and did not work. Doing this also let me get feedback and advice on what was not working so I had more success fixing it quickly. Perhaps your student does not realize she can (and should) talk about things in terms of what is working and not. Perhaps letting her know that if something is not working she should give a heads up, and have a plan of action/a few ideas on how to fix it to present as well? It sounds like she is trying, but overwhelmed or does not know how to communicate it. She is probably equally distressed about her progress. | How often do you have check ins? I will typically alert my PI the instant I realize that I won’t be able to meet a deadline or set up a model appropriately (like if I’m missing a variable in my version of the dataset). It could be that she isn’t flagging issues like this as often as you would like. Or that things take her longer to do than you would expect — and maybe you could be providing some pedagogy of your own there, to help her overcome roadblocks ? | 1 | 4,611 | 1.625 |
vxjo08 | askacademia_train | 0.93 | How to talk to a grad student about productivity issues? I'm paying one of my grad students for 40 hours of work per week, and I feel like I'm getting barely half of that. How do I politely approach her on this subject without sounding like I'm micromanaging? I'm fairly new to academia, so I haven't really had to deal with this before. Most of what she's currently working on is funded from an internal pot of money, so it's not like she's missing external deadlines from sponsors. I will tell her that I want a certain model estimated by so-and-so, and when that time comes she'll tell me that she was having issues with the software, or the model was giving errors, or that it's taking longer to converge than she expected. I.e., nothing I can definitively call her out on. This is a PhD student entering her third year, and I'm worried that she's slipping. I just don't know how to broach this respectfully. | ifwv0hg | ifxcypv | 1,657,662,625 | 1,657,670,382 | 6 | 13 | As a manager, the big issue I see with your student's work, based on your description, boils down to communication. Sometimes things take longer than expected. But when that happens, she should come to you, as far in advance of the deadline as possible, and tell you that she is likely going to miss the deadline, what difficulties she is running into, what she plans to do about it, and what a revised timeline will likely be. We can't always meet deadlines. That's just reality. But we can tell in advance when we won't be able to meet a deadline, and it is our responsibility to let those in charge know BEFORE the deadline arrives. It is also our responsibility to provide updated timelines, details about why things are taking longer, and a solution oriented plan for how we will get things back on track. Doing this is a big part of being a professional, regardless of the type of work. I would focus on this when you talk with her. She should come to you with problems earlier. She should not wait until the deadline to speak up. Fixing the communication issue will fix other issues. Is she hitting a brick wall figuring out something new? If so, she can bring it up with you early, you'll know about it, and you can help her. Do things just take her longer than you both expect? You'll get a window into why that is. Is she not putting in the hours she needs to? There's no excuse for saying it's not done on the day it's due. She will need details, earlier in the process, to excuse not getting it done, and she won't have those if she doesn't put in the time. | I will preface this with saying I am a grad student. Sometimes, I do feel like I am not getting enough done when issues come up. One of the things my advisor let me know was not only to talk about when it succeeded but also when something failed or was an issue. I had never encountered that way of thinking before grad school. It changed a lot for me. I now am specific about what worked and did not work. Doing this also let me get feedback and advice on what was not working so I had more success fixing it quickly. Perhaps your student does not realize she can (and should) talk about things in terms of what is working and not. Perhaps letting her know that if something is not working she should give a heads up, and have a plan of action/a few ideas on how to fix it to present as well? It sounds like she is trying, but overwhelmed or does not know how to communicate it. She is probably equally distressed about her progress. | 0 | 7,757 | 2.166667 |
vxjo08 | askacademia_train | 0.93 | How to talk to a grad student about productivity issues? I'm paying one of my grad students for 40 hours of work per week, and I feel like I'm getting barely half of that. How do I politely approach her on this subject without sounding like I'm micromanaging? I'm fairly new to academia, so I haven't really had to deal with this before. Most of what she's currently working on is funded from an internal pot of money, so it's not like she's missing external deadlines from sponsors. I will tell her that I want a certain model estimated by so-and-so, and when that time comes she'll tell me that she was having issues with the software, or the model was giving errors, or that it's taking longer to converge than she expected. I.e., nothing I can definitively call her out on. This is a PhD student entering her third year, and I'm worried that she's slipping. I just don't know how to broach this respectfully. | ifwrur1 | ifxcypv | 1,657,661,349 | 1,657,670,382 | 4 | 13 | Is this dissertation -related work or is it an RAship on a project external to her dissertation work? | I will preface this with saying I am a grad student. Sometimes, I do feel like I am not getting enough done when issues come up. One of the things my advisor let me know was not only to talk about when it succeeded but also when something failed or was an issue. I had never encountered that way of thinking before grad school. It changed a lot for me. I now am specific about what worked and did not work. Doing this also let me get feedback and advice on what was not working so I had more success fixing it quickly. Perhaps your student does not realize she can (and should) talk about things in terms of what is working and not. Perhaps letting her know that if something is not working she should give a heads up, and have a plan of action/a few ideas on how to fix it to present as well? It sounds like she is trying, but overwhelmed or does not know how to communicate it. She is probably equally distressed about her progress. | 0 | 9,033 | 3.25 |
vxjo08 | askacademia_train | 0.93 | How to talk to a grad student about productivity issues? I'm paying one of my grad students for 40 hours of work per week, and I feel like I'm getting barely half of that. How do I politely approach her on this subject without sounding like I'm micromanaging? I'm fairly new to academia, so I haven't really had to deal with this before. Most of what she's currently working on is funded from an internal pot of money, so it's not like she's missing external deadlines from sponsors. I will tell her that I want a certain model estimated by so-and-so, and when that time comes she'll tell me that she was having issues with the software, or the model was giving errors, or that it's taking longer to converge than she expected. I.e., nothing I can definitively call her out on. This is a PhD student entering her third year, and I'm worried that she's slipping. I just don't know how to broach this respectfully. | ifwlua7 | ifxcypv | 1,657,658,974 | 1,657,670,382 | 3 | 13 | Just keep it to the facts. She isn't meeting deadlines. This needs to be fixed. Does she need help with modeling because you're finding errors. etc. | I will preface this with saying I am a grad student. Sometimes, I do feel like I am not getting enough done when issues come up. One of the things my advisor let me know was not only to talk about when it succeeded but also when something failed or was an issue. I had never encountered that way of thinking before grad school. It changed a lot for me. I now am specific about what worked and did not work. Doing this also let me get feedback and advice on what was not working so I had more success fixing it quickly. Perhaps your student does not realize she can (and should) talk about things in terms of what is working and not. Perhaps letting her know that if something is not working she should give a heads up, and have a plan of action/a few ideas on how to fix it to present as well? It sounds like she is trying, but overwhelmed or does not know how to communicate it. She is probably equally distressed about her progress. | 0 | 11,408 | 4.333333 |
vxjo08 | askacademia_train | 0.93 | How to talk to a grad student about productivity issues? I'm paying one of my grad students for 40 hours of work per week, and I feel like I'm getting barely half of that. How do I politely approach her on this subject without sounding like I'm micromanaging? I'm fairly new to academia, so I haven't really had to deal with this before. Most of what she's currently working on is funded from an internal pot of money, so it's not like she's missing external deadlines from sponsors. I will tell her that I want a certain model estimated by so-and-so, and when that time comes she'll tell me that she was having issues with the software, or the model was giving errors, or that it's taking longer to converge than she expected. I.e., nothing I can definitively call her out on. This is a PhD student entering her third year, and I'm worried that she's slipping. I just don't know how to broach this respectfully. | ifx4oli | ifxcypv | 1,657,666,752 | 1,657,670,382 | 4 | 13 | >paying one of my grad students for 40 hours of work per week, and I feel like I'm getting barely half of that >PhD student entering her third year I'm guessing she's done with coursework and teaching requirements? Has she passed the qualifying exam or is some of her attention and focus needed there? Does she have a dissertation committee that requires regular meetings? I remember that when I was in grad school I had to present every 6-12 months, depending on how far in I was, for the committee to evaluate the student's progression towards completion. If there's a meeting coming up soon, that can be a topic to discuss with the other members and then address with the student. >having issues with the software, or the model was giving errors, or that it's taking longer to converge than she expected. I mean, that's sometimes how it is. If it seems that there are consistent problems in a certain area, like programming to adjust the model or a lack of important skills/knowledge, then reach out to colleagues/collaborators to arrange for additional training and/or mentorship so that she is better prepared to overcome these hurdles and can do so more quickly. | I will preface this with saying I am a grad student. Sometimes, I do feel like I am not getting enough done when issues come up. One of the things my advisor let me know was not only to talk about when it succeeded but also when something failed or was an issue. I had never encountered that way of thinking before grad school. It changed a lot for me. I now am specific about what worked and did not work. Doing this also let me get feedback and advice on what was not working so I had more success fixing it quickly. Perhaps your student does not realize she can (and should) talk about things in terms of what is working and not. Perhaps letting her know that if something is not working she should give a heads up, and have a plan of action/a few ideas on how to fix it to present as well? It sounds like she is trying, but overwhelmed or does not know how to communicate it. She is probably equally distressed about her progress. | 0 | 3,630 | 3.25 |
vxjo08 | askacademia_train | 0.93 | How to talk to a grad student about productivity issues? I'm paying one of my grad students for 40 hours of work per week, and I feel like I'm getting barely half of that. How do I politely approach her on this subject without sounding like I'm micromanaging? I'm fairly new to academia, so I haven't really had to deal with this before. Most of what she's currently working on is funded from an internal pot of money, so it's not like she's missing external deadlines from sponsors. I will tell her that I want a certain model estimated by so-and-so, and when that time comes she'll tell me that she was having issues with the software, or the model was giving errors, or that it's taking longer to converge than she expected. I.e., nothing I can definitively call her out on. This is a PhD student entering her third year, and I'm worried that she's slipping. I just don't know how to broach this respectfully. | ifx6o6b | ifxcypv | 1,657,667,611 | 1,657,670,382 | 3 | 13 | I think the answer completely depends on how you philosophically see your role and hers. Is it possible that she has slowed down because she isn't happy there, or is this due to training and management? Do you see her as the employee and you as the manager? If so, then the appropriate level of management is to provide all the resources they need, identify where her performance is lacking, set clear expectations with time goals that are reasonable, and then proceed towards disciplinary-like action if she cannot meet or exceed your standards. Do you see her as a student and you as her coach/guide/advisor? Then the strategies are similar, but ultimately very different in approach. Equally as important, how does she see this dynamic? Does this dynamic align with why she even came to grad school? Because if she expected a coach/guide/advisor and instead has a manager, then of course she would be slow and resistive. There are so many ways to approach management and coaching... and it's your choice on how to approach your own lab. But I would say this: Do you think she came to graduate school to do a slow and piss-poor job? Obviously not. So why would she act this way? Address the issue; ask her directly. I don't think anyone comes to grad school with the goal of being a bad student. We come because we hope to be successful at whatever it is we are after. We all tend to work hard and do our best when there is strong support and we feel valued. And we tend to slow down and do poorly when we feel as if we're just a cog and a technician doing someone's bidding. | I will preface this with saying I am a grad student. Sometimes, I do feel like I am not getting enough done when issues come up. One of the things my advisor let me know was not only to talk about when it succeeded but also when something failed or was an issue. I had never encountered that way of thinking before grad school. It changed a lot for me. I now am specific about what worked and did not work. Doing this also let me get feedback and advice on what was not working so I had more success fixing it quickly. Perhaps your student does not realize she can (and should) talk about things in terms of what is working and not. Perhaps letting her know that if something is not working she should give a heads up, and have a plan of action/a few ideas on how to fix it to present as well? It sounds like she is trying, but overwhelmed or does not know how to communicate it. She is probably equally distressed about her progress. | 0 | 2,771 | 4.333333 |
vxjo08 | askacademia_train | 0.93 | How to talk to a grad student about productivity issues? I'm paying one of my grad students for 40 hours of work per week, and I feel like I'm getting barely half of that. How do I politely approach her on this subject without sounding like I'm micromanaging? I'm fairly new to academia, so I haven't really had to deal with this before. Most of what she's currently working on is funded from an internal pot of money, so it's not like she's missing external deadlines from sponsors. I will tell her that I want a certain model estimated by so-and-so, and when that time comes she'll tell me that she was having issues with the software, or the model was giving errors, or that it's taking longer to converge than she expected. I.e., nothing I can definitively call her out on. This is a PhD student entering her third year, and I'm worried that she's slipping. I just don't know how to broach this respectfully. | ifxonwd | ifx319a | 1,657,675,690 | 1,657,666,050 | 13 | 11 | Make sure she's not afraid to ask for help or admit that she's unable to solve certain problems on her own. This is a huge issue in academia that is holding many students back, and it's a much bigger issue in the US than any other country I've worked in. Too many students are afraid of admitting to their PI's when they actually don't know how to solve a problem. | Sounds like you might be seeing the outcome of other factors in her life. It may be helpful to consider that this person my be in crisis in life outside of her work and may need support, resources, or someone to be there for her. I’m not saying that you are not providing these things but grad school is a psychological beating (on top of balancing life events) and it is much harder than profs often remember. If you can check in with these factors first the conversation about productivity may not even need to happen! I certainly would not recommend combining the two conversations but if productivity is still an issue after addressing her as a person then a separate conversation is okay. For the record I have been on the other end of this same conversation (the productivity one) at a time when my life was falling to pieces in the background. It was a horrible experience because I was not doing well but didn’t not feel that I could say anything. The professor took the same attitude of “slipping” and led me to feel that I was replaceable and perhaps didn’t have what it takes. That was also one of those departments that often says, “maybe this isn’t the right time for a PhD” as if life is predictable and simple. I am not saying let her productivity issues go. Maybe just consider that issues outside of her “slipping” might be at play in the change in productivity. Hope this helps. | 1 | 9,640 | 1.181818 |
vxjo08 | askacademia_train | 0.93 | How to talk to a grad student about productivity issues? I'm paying one of my grad students for 40 hours of work per week, and I feel like I'm getting barely half of that. How do I politely approach her on this subject without sounding like I'm micromanaging? I'm fairly new to academia, so I haven't really had to deal with this before. Most of what she's currently working on is funded from an internal pot of money, so it's not like she's missing external deadlines from sponsors. I will tell her that I want a certain model estimated by so-and-so, and when that time comes she'll tell me that she was having issues with the software, or the model was giving errors, or that it's taking longer to converge than she expected. I.e., nothing I can definitively call her out on. This is a PhD student entering her third year, and I'm worried that she's slipping. I just don't know how to broach this respectfully. | ifwvjx6 | ifxonwd | 1,657,662,840 | 1,657,675,690 | 10 | 13 | I typed this as a reply to /u/the_y_files but decided to leave it as a top level comment so you would be sure to see it. You can try to get to the bottom of what is causing her slowness by having her let you know as soon as she knows she's not going to make the deadline and why. Depending on when you hear from her and about what, it becomes clear extremely quickly whether she's 1) running into legitimate problems, 2) underperforming despite diligence, or 3) slacking off. You could also use more of a shared decision making model for deadlines, so when a deadline changes, it is also on her for having misestimated. This has the bonus of making her a better project manager which will be an excellent skill for most any early-career job she ends up in after her PhD. It may also be worth having a separate meeting to frankly say to her that you were hoping that she'd be producing work at a faster pace by this point in her training than she is and open a dialogue about what she thinks she needs from you to improve. Even though you suspect that slacking may be a contributing factor, you should come at this with the benefit of the doubt that it's a competence issue and with the humility to accept that the problem may be you having unrealistic expectations for what an *average* 3rd year PhD student can produce. | Make sure she's not afraid to ask for help or admit that she's unable to solve certain problems on her own. This is a huge issue in academia that is holding many students back, and it's a much bigger issue in the US than any other country I've worked in. Too many students are afraid of admitting to their PI's when they actually don't know how to solve a problem. | 0 | 12,850 | 1.3 |
vxjo08 | askacademia_train | 0.93 | How to talk to a grad student about productivity issues? I'm paying one of my grad students for 40 hours of work per week, and I feel like I'm getting barely half of that. How do I politely approach her on this subject without sounding like I'm micromanaging? I'm fairly new to academia, so I haven't really had to deal with this before. Most of what she's currently working on is funded from an internal pot of money, so it's not like she's missing external deadlines from sponsors. I will tell her that I want a certain model estimated by so-and-so, and when that time comes she'll tell me that she was having issues with the software, or the model was giving errors, or that it's taking longer to converge than she expected. I.e., nothing I can definitively call her out on. This is a PhD student entering her third year, and I'm worried that she's slipping. I just don't know how to broach this respectfully. | ifx2dnx | ifxonwd | 1,657,665,771 | 1,657,675,690 | 8 | 13 | How often do you have check ins? I will typically alert my PI the instant I realize that I won’t be able to meet a deadline or set up a model appropriately (like if I’m missing a variable in my version of the dataset). It could be that she isn’t flagging issues like this as often as you would like. Or that things take her longer to do than you would expect — and maybe you could be providing some pedagogy of your own there, to help her overcome roadblocks ? | Make sure she's not afraid to ask for help or admit that she's unable to solve certain problems on her own. This is a huge issue in academia that is holding many students back, and it's a much bigger issue in the US than any other country I've worked in. Too many students are afraid of admitting to their PI's when they actually don't know how to solve a problem. | 0 | 9,919 | 1.625 |
vxjo08 | askacademia_train | 0.93 | How to talk to a grad student about productivity issues? I'm paying one of my grad students for 40 hours of work per week, and I feel like I'm getting barely half of that. How do I politely approach her on this subject without sounding like I'm micromanaging? I'm fairly new to academia, so I haven't really had to deal with this before. Most of what she's currently working on is funded from an internal pot of money, so it's not like she's missing external deadlines from sponsors. I will tell her that I want a certain model estimated by so-and-so, and when that time comes she'll tell me that she was having issues with the software, or the model was giving errors, or that it's taking longer to converge than she expected. I.e., nothing I can definitively call her out on. This is a PhD student entering her third year, and I'm worried that she's slipping. I just don't know how to broach this respectfully. | ifwv0hg | ifxonwd | 1,657,662,625 | 1,657,675,690 | 6 | 13 | As a manager, the big issue I see with your student's work, based on your description, boils down to communication. Sometimes things take longer than expected. But when that happens, she should come to you, as far in advance of the deadline as possible, and tell you that she is likely going to miss the deadline, what difficulties she is running into, what she plans to do about it, and what a revised timeline will likely be. We can't always meet deadlines. That's just reality. But we can tell in advance when we won't be able to meet a deadline, and it is our responsibility to let those in charge know BEFORE the deadline arrives. It is also our responsibility to provide updated timelines, details about why things are taking longer, and a solution oriented plan for how we will get things back on track. Doing this is a big part of being a professional, regardless of the type of work. I would focus on this when you talk with her. She should come to you with problems earlier. She should not wait until the deadline to speak up. Fixing the communication issue will fix other issues. Is she hitting a brick wall figuring out something new? If so, she can bring it up with you early, you'll know about it, and you can help her. Do things just take her longer than you both expect? You'll get a window into why that is. Is she not putting in the hours she needs to? There's no excuse for saying it's not done on the day it's due. She will need details, earlier in the process, to excuse not getting it done, and she won't have those if she doesn't put in the time. | Make sure she's not afraid to ask for help or admit that she's unable to solve certain problems on her own. This is a huge issue in academia that is holding many students back, and it's a much bigger issue in the US than any other country I've worked in. Too many students are afraid of admitting to their PI's when they actually don't know how to solve a problem. | 0 | 13,065 | 2.166667 |
vxjo08 | askacademia_train | 0.93 | How to talk to a grad student about productivity issues? I'm paying one of my grad students for 40 hours of work per week, and I feel like I'm getting barely half of that. How do I politely approach her on this subject without sounding like I'm micromanaging? I'm fairly new to academia, so I haven't really had to deal with this before. Most of what she's currently working on is funded from an internal pot of money, so it's not like she's missing external deadlines from sponsors. I will tell her that I want a certain model estimated by so-and-so, and when that time comes she'll tell me that she was having issues with the software, or the model was giving errors, or that it's taking longer to converge than she expected. I.e., nothing I can definitively call her out on. This is a PhD student entering her third year, and I'm worried that she's slipping. I just don't know how to broach this respectfully. | ifxd2pg | ifxonwd | 1,657,670,430 | 1,657,675,690 | 6 | 13 | I have students doing large nonlinear simulations across multiple software packages. As someone said, convergence can take a week. Heck, we were tuning simulations supposedly to replace experiments but at first the sims took almost as long. A thought: Ask her to give weekly presentations of everything she has tried, win lose or draw. I had students do this to ensure they were working but also to keep a catalog of what does and doesn’t work. I was finding that they would try them retry the same things, having forgotten they did them or did something similar already . | Make sure she's not afraid to ask for help or admit that she's unable to solve certain problems on her own. This is a huge issue in academia that is holding many students back, and it's a much bigger issue in the US than any other country I've worked in. Too many students are afraid of admitting to their PI's when they actually don't know how to solve a problem. | 0 | 5,260 | 2.166667 |
vxjo08 | askacademia_train | 0.93 | How to talk to a grad student about productivity issues? I'm paying one of my grad students for 40 hours of work per week, and I feel like I'm getting barely half of that. How do I politely approach her on this subject without sounding like I'm micromanaging? I'm fairly new to academia, so I haven't really had to deal with this before. Most of what she's currently working on is funded from an internal pot of money, so it's not like she's missing external deadlines from sponsors. I will tell her that I want a certain model estimated by so-and-so, and when that time comes she'll tell me that she was having issues with the software, or the model was giving errors, or that it's taking longer to converge than she expected. I.e., nothing I can definitively call her out on. This is a PhD student entering her third year, and I'm worried that she's slipping. I just don't know how to broach this respectfully. | ifxonwd | ifwrur1 | 1,657,675,690 | 1,657,661,349 | 13 | 4 | Make sure she's not afraid to ask for help or admit that she's unable to solve certain problems on her own. This is a huge issue in academia that is holding many students back, and it's a much bigger issue in the US than any other country I've worked in. Too many students are afraid of admitting to their PI's when they actually don't know how to solve a problem. | Is this dissertation -related work or is it an RAship on a project external to her dissertation work? | 1 | 14,341 | 3.25 |
vxjo08 | askacademia_train | 0.93 | How to talk to a grad student about productivity issues? I'm paying one of my grad students for 40 hours of work per week, and I feel like I'm getting barely half of that. How do I politely approach her on this subject without sounding like I'm micromanaging? I'm fairly new to academia, so I haven't really had to deal with this before. Most of what she's currently working on is funded from an internal pot of money, so it's not like she's missing external deadlines from sponsors. I will tell her that I want a certain model estimated by so-and-so, and when that time comes she'll tell me that she was having issues with the software, or the model was giving errors, or that it's taking longer to converge than she expected. I.e., nothing I can definitively call her out on. This is a PhD student entering her third year, and I'm worried that she's slipping. I just don't know how to broach this respectfully. | ifwlua7 | ifxonwd | 1,657,658,974 | 1,657,675,690 | 3 | 13 | Just keep it to the facts. She isn't meeting deadlines. This needs to be fixed. Does she need help with modeling because you're finding errors. etc. | Make sure she's not afraid to ask for help or admit that she's unable to solve certain problems on her own. This is a huge issue in academia that is holding many students back, and it's a much bigger issue in the US than any other country I've worked in. Too many students are afraid of admitting to their PI's when they actually don't know how to solve a problem. | 0 | 16,716 | 4.333333 |
vxjo08 | askacademia_train | 0.93 | How to talk to a grad student about productivity issues? I'm paying one of my grad students for 40 hours of work per week, and I feel like I'm getting barely half of that. How do I politely approach her on this subject without sounding like I'm micromanaging? I'm fairly new to academia, so I haven't really had to deal with this before. Most of what she's currently working on is funded from an internal pot of money, so it's not like she's missing external deadlines from sponsors. I will tell her that I want a certain model estimated by so-and-so, and when that time comes she'll tell me that she was having issues with the software, or the model was giving errors, or that it's taking longer to converge than she expected. I.e., nothing I can definitively call her out on. This is a PhD student entering her third year, and I'm worried that she's slipping. I just don't know how to broach this respectfully. | ifx4oli | ifxonwd | 1,657,666,752 | 1,657,675,690 | 4 | 13 | >paying one of my grad students for 40 hours of work per week, and I feel like I'm getting barely half of that >PhD student entering her third year I'm guessing she's done with coursework and teaching requirements? Has she passed the qualifying exam or is some of her attention and focus needed there? Does she have a dissertation committee that requires regular meetings? I remember that when I was in grad school I had to present every 6-12 months, depending on how far in I was, for the committee to evaluate the student's progression towards completion. If there's a meeting coming up soon, that can be a topic to discuss with the other members and then address with the student. >having issues with the software, or the model was giving errors, or that it's taking longer to converge than she expected. I mean, that's sometimes how it is. If it seems that there are consistent problems in a certain area, like programming to adjust the model or a lack of important skills/knowledge, then reach out to colleagues/collaborators to arrange for additional training and/or mentorship so that she is better prepared to overcome these hurdles and can do so more quickly. | Make sure she's not afraid to ask for help or admit that she's unable to solve certain problems on her own. This is a huge issue in academia that is holding many students back, and it's a much bigger issue in the US than any other country I've worked in. Too many students are afraid of admitting to their PI's when they actually don't know how to solve a problem. | 0 | 8,938 | 3.25 |
vxjo08 | askacademia_train | 0.93 | How to talk to a grad student about productivity issues? I'm paying one of my grad students for 40 hours of work per week, and I feel like I'm getting barely half of that. How do I politely approach her on this subject without sounding like I'm micromanaging? I'm fairly new to academia, so I haven't really had to deal with this before. Most of what she's currently working on is funded from an internal pot of money, so it's not like she's missing external deadlines from sponsors. I will tell her that I want a certain model estimated by so-and-so, and when that time comes she'll tell me that she was having issues with the software, or the model was giving errors, or that it's taking longer to converge than she expected. I.e., nothing I can definitively call her out on. This is a PhD student entering her third year, and I'm worried that she's slipping. I just don't know how to broach this respectfully. | ifx6o6b | ifxonwd | 1,657,667,611 | 1,657,675,690 | 3 | 13 | I think the answer completely depends on how you philosophically see your role and hers. Is it possible that she has slowed down because she isn't happy there, or is this due to training and management? Do you see her as the employee and you as the manager? If so, then the appropriate level of management is to provide all the resources they need, identify where her performance is lacking, set clear expectations with time goals that are reasonable, and then proceed towards disciplinary-like action if she cannot meet or exceed your standards. Do you see her as a student and you as her coach/guide/advisor? Then the strategies are similar, but ultimately very different in approach. Equally as important, how does she see this dynamic? Does this dynamic align with why she even came to grad school? Because if she expected a coach/guide/advisor and instead has a manager, then of course she would be slow and resistive. There are so many ways to approach management and coaching... and it's your choice on how to approach your own lab. But I would say this: Do you think she came to graduate school to do a slow and piss-poor job? Obviously not. So why would she act this way? Address the issue; ask her directly. I don't think anyone comes to grad school with the goal of being a bad student. We come because we hope to be successful at whatever it is we are after. We all tend to work hard and do our best when there is strong support and we feel valued. And we tend to slow down and do poorly when we feel as if we're just a cog and a technician doing someone's bidding. | Make sure she's not afraid to ask for help or admit that she's unable to solve certain problems on her own. This is a huge issue in academia that is holding many students back, and it's a much bigger issue in the US than any other country I've worked in. Too many students are afraid of admitting to their PI's when they actually don't know how to solve a problem. | 0 | 8,079 | 4.333333 |
vxjo08 | askacademia_train | 0.93 | How to talk to a grad student about productivity issues? I'm paying one of my grad students for 40 hours of work per week, and I feel like I'm getting barely half of that. How do I politely approach her on this subject without sounding like I'm micromanaging? I'm fairly new to academia, so I haven't really had to deal with this before. Most of what she's currently working on is funded from an internal pot of money, so it's not like she's missing external deadlines from sponsors. I will tell her that I want a certain model estimated by so-and-so, and when that time comes she'll tell me that she was having issues with the software, or the model was giving errors, or that it's taking longer to converge than she expected. I.e., nothing I can definitively call her out on. This is a PhD student entering her third year, and I'm worried that she's slipping. I just don't know how to broach this respectfully. | ifx319a | ifwvjx6 | 1,657,666,050 | 1,657,662,840 | 11 | 10 | Sounds like you might be seeing the outcome of other factors in her life. It may be helpful to consider that this person my be in crisis in life outside of her work and may need support, resources, or someone to be there for her. I’m not saying that you are not providing these things but grad school is a psychological beating (on top of balancing life events) and it is much harder than profs often remember. If you can check in with these factors first the conversation about productivity may not even need to happen! I certainly would not recommend combining the two conversations but if productivity is still an issue after addressing her as a person then a separate conversation is okay. For the record I have been on the other end of this same conversation (the productivity one) at a time when my life was falling to pieces in the background. It was a horrible experience because I was not doing well but didn’t not feel that I could say anything. The professor took the same attitude of “slipping” and led me to feel that I was replaceable and perhaps didn’t have what it takes. That was also one of those departments that often says, “maybe this isn’t the right time for a PhD” as if life is predictable and simple. I am not saying let her productivity issues go. Maybe just consider that issues outside of her “slipping” might be at play in the change in productivity. Hope this helps. | I typed this as a reply to /u/the_y_files but decided to leave it as a top level comment so you would be sure to see it. You can try to get to the bottom of what is causing her slowness by having her let you know as soon as she knows she's not going to make the deadline and why. Depending on when you hear from her and about what, it becomes clear extremely quickly whether she's 1) running into legitimate problems, 2) underperforming despite diligence, or 3) slacking off. You could also use more of a shared decision making model for deadlines, so when a deadline changes, it is also on her for having misestimated. This has the bonus of making her a better project manager which will be an excellent skill for most any early-career job she ends up in after her PhD. It may also be worth having a separate meeting to frankly say to her that you were hoping that she'd be producing work at a faster pace by this point in her training than she is and open a dialogue about what she thinks she needs from you to improve. Even though you suspect that slacking may be a contributing factor, you should come at this with the benefit of the doubt that it's a competence issue and with the humility to accept that the problem may be you having unrealistic expectations for what an *average* 3rd year PhD student can produce. | 1 | 3,210 | 1.1 |
vxjo08 | askacademia_train | 0.93 | How to talk to a grad student about productivity issues? I'm paying one of my grad students for 40 hours of work per week, and I feel like I'm getting barely half of that. How do I politely approach her on this subject without sounding like I'm micromanaging? I'm fairly new to academia, so I haven't really had to deal with this before. Most of what she's currently working on is funded from an internal pot of money, so it's not like she's missing external deadlines from sponsors. I will tell her that I want a certain model estimated by so-and-so, and when that time comes she'll tell me that she was having issues with the software, or the model was giving errors, or that it's taking longer to converge than she expected. I.e., nothing I can definitively call her out on. This is a PhD student entering her third year, and I'm worried that she's slipping. I just don't know how to broach this respectfully. | ifx2dnx | ifx319a | 1,657,665,771 | 1,657,666,050 | 8 | 11 | How often do you have check ins? I will typically alert my PI the instant I realize that I won’t be able to meet a deadline or set up a model appropriately (like if I’m missing a variable in my version of the dataset). It could be that she isn’t flagging issues like this as often as you would like. Or that things take her longer to do than you would expect — and maybe you could be providing some pedagogy of your own there, to help her overcome roadblocks ? | Sounds like you might be seeing the outcome of other factors in her life. It may be helpful to consider that this person my be in crisis in life outside of her work and may need support, resources, or someone to be there for her. I’m not saying that you are not providing these things but grad school is a psychological beating (on top of balancing life events) and it is much harder than profs often remember. If you can check in with these factors first the conversation about productivity may not even need to happen! I certainly would not recommend combining the two conversations but if productivity is still an issue after addressing her as a person then a separate conversation is okay. For the record I have been on the other end of this same conversation (the productivity one) at a time when my life was falling to pieces in the background. It was a horrible experience because I was not doing well but didn’t not feel that I could say anything. The professor took the same attitude of “slipping” and led me to feel that I was replaceable and perhaps didn’t have what it takes. That was also one of those departments that often says, “maybe this isn’t the right time for a PhD” as if life is predictable and simple. I am not saying let her productivity issues go. Maybe just consider that issues outside of her “slipping” might be at play in the change in productivity. Hope this helps. | 0 | 279 | 1.375 |
vxjo08 | askacademia_train | 0.93 | How to talk to a grad student about productivity issues? I'm paying one of my grad students for 40 hours of work per week, and I feel like I'm getting barely half of that. How do I politely approach her on this subject without sounding like I'm micromanaging? I'm fairly new to academia, so I haven't really had to deal with this before. Most of what she's currently working on is funded from an internal pot of money, so it's not like she's missing external deadlines from sponsors. I will tell her that I want a certain model estimated by so-and-so, and when that time comes she'll tell me that she was having issues with the software, or the model was giving errors, or that it's taking longer to converge than she expected. I.e., nothing I can definitively call her out on. This is a PhD student entering her third year, and I'm worried that she's slipping. I just don't know how to broach this respectfully. | ifwv0hg | ifx319a | 1,657,662,625 | 1,657,666,050 | 6 | 11 | As a manager, the big issue I see with your student's work, based on your description, boils down to communication. Sometimes things take longer than expected. But when that happens, she should come to you, as far in advance of the deadline as possible, and tell you that she is likely going to miss the deadline, what difficulties she is running into, what she plans to do about it, and what a revised timeline will likely be. We can't always meet deadlines. That's just reality. But we can tell in advance when we won't be able to meet a deadline, and it is our responsibility to let those in charge know BEFORE the deadline arrives. It is also our responsibility to provide updated timelines, details about why things are taking longer, and a solution oriented plan for how we will get things back on track. Doing this is a big part of being a professional, regardless of the type of work. I would focus on this when you talk with her. She should come to you with problems earlier. She should not wait until the deadline to speak up. Fixing the communication issue will fix other issues. Is she hitting a brick wall figuring out something new? If so, she can bring it up with you early, you'll know about it, and you can help her. Do things just take her longer than you both expect? You'll get a window into why that is. Is she not putting in the hours she needs to? There's no excuse for saying it's not done on the day it's due. She will need details, earlier in the process, to excuse not getting it done, and she won't have those if she doesn't put in the time. | Sounds like you might be seeing the outcome of other factors in her life. It may be helpful to consider that this person my be in crisis in life outside of her work and may need support, resources, or someone to be there for her. I’m not saying that you are not providing these things but grad school is a psychological beating (on top of balancing life events) and it is much harder than profs often remember. If you can check in with these factors first the conversation about productivity may not even need to happen! I certainly would not recommend combining the two conversations but if productivity is still an issue after addressing her as a person then a separate conversation is okay. For the record I have been on the other end of this same conversation (the productivity one) at a time when my life was falling to pieces in the background. It was a horrible experience because I was not doing well but didn’t not feel that I could say anything. The professor took the same attitude of “slipping” and led me to feel that I was replaceable and perhaps didn’t have what it takes. That was also one of those departments that often says, “maybe this isn’t the right time for a PhD” as if life is predictable and simple. I am not saying let her productivity issues go. Maybe just consider that issues outside of her “slipping” might be at play in the change in productivity. Hope this helps. | 0 | 3,425 | 1.833333 |
vxjo08 | askacademia_train | 0.93 | How to talk to a grad student about productivity issues? I'm paying one of my grad students for 40 hours of work per week, and I feel like I'm getting barely half of that. How do I politely approach her on this subject without sounding like I'm micromanaging? I'm fairly new to academia, so I haven't really had to deal with this before. Most of what she's currently working on is funded from an internal pot of money, so it's not like she's missing external deadlines from sponsors. I will tell her that I want a certain model estimated by so-and-so, and when that time comes she'll tell me that she was having issues with the software, or the model was giving errors, or that it's taking longer to converge than she expected. I.e., nothing I can definitively call her out on. This is a PhD student entering her third year, and I'm worried that she's slipping. I just don't know how to broach this respectfully. | ifwrur1 | ifx319a | 1,657,661,349 | 1,657,666,050 | 4 | 11 | Is this dissertation -related work or is it an RAship on a project external to her dissertation work? | Sounds like you might be seeing the outcome of other factors in her life. It may be helpful to consider that this person my be in crisis in life outside of her work and may need support, resources, or someone to be there for her. I’m not saying that you are not providing these things but grad school is a psychological beating (on top of balancing life events) and it is much harder than profs often remember. If you can check in with these factors first the conversation about productivity may not even need to happen! I certainly would not recommend combining the two conversations but if productivity is still an issue after addressing her as a person then a separate conversation is okay. For the record I have been on the other end of this same conversation (the productivity one) at a time when my life was falling to pieces in the background. It was a horrible experience because I was not doing well but didn’t not feel that I could say anything. The professor took the same attitude of “slipping” and led me to feel that I was replaceable and perhaps didn’t have what it takes. That was also one of those departments that often says, “maybe this isn’t the right time for a PhD” as if life is predictable and simple. I am not saying let her productivity issues go. Maybe just consider that issues outside of her “slipping” might be at play in the change in productivity. Hope this helps. | 0 | 4,701 | 2.75 |
vxjo08 | askacademia_train | 0.93 | How to talk to a grad student about productivity issues? I'm paying one of my grad students for 40 hours of work per week, and I feel like I'm getting barely half of that. How do I politely approach her on this subject without sounding like I'm micromanaging? I'm fairly new to academia, so I haven't really had to deal with this before. Most of what she's currently working on is funded from an internal pot of money, so it's not like she's missing external deadlines from sponsors. I will tell her that I want a certain model estimated by so-and-so, and when that time comes she'll tell me that she was having issues with the software, or the model was giving errors, or that it's taking longer to converge than she expected. I.e., nothing I can definitively call her out on. This is a PhD student entering her third year, and I'm worried that she's slipping. I just don't know how to broach this respectfully. | ifwlua7 | ifx319a | 1,657,658,974 | 1,657,666,050 | 3 | 11 | Just keep it to the facts. She isn't meeting deadlines. This needs to be fixed. Does she need help with modeling because you're finding errors. etc. | Sounds like you might be seeing the outcome of other factors in her life. It may be helpful to consider that this person my be in crisis in life outside of her work and may need support, resources, or someone to be there for her. I’m not saying that you are not providing these things but grad school is a psychological beating (on top of balancing life events) and it is much harder than profs often remember. If you can check in with these factors first the conversation about productivity may not even need to happen! I certainly would not recommend combining the two conversations but if productivity is still an issue after addressing her as a person then a separate conversation is okay. For the record I have been on the other end of this same conversation (the productivity one) at a time when my life was falling to pieces in the background. It was a horrible experience because I was not doing well but didn’t not feel that I could say anything. The professor took the same attitude of “slipping” and led me to feel that I was replaceable and perhaps didn’t have what it takes. That was also one of those departments that often says, “maybe this isn’t the right time for a PhD” as if life is predictable and simple. I am not saying let her productivity issues go. Maybe just consider that issues outside of her “slipping” might be at play in the change in productivity. Hope this helps. | 0 | 7,076 | 3.666667 |
vxjo08 | askacademia_train | 0.93 | How to talk to a grad student about productivity issues? I'm paying one of my grad students for 40 hours of work per week, and I feel like I'm getting barely half of that. How do I politely approach her on this subject without sounding like I'm micromanaging? I'm fairly new to academia, so I haven't really had to deal with this before. Most of what she's currently working on is funded from an internal pot of money, so it's not like she's missing external deadlines from sponsors. I will tell her that I want a certain model estimated by so-and-so, and when that time comes she'll tell me that she was having issues with the software, or the model was giving errors, or that it's taking longer to converge than she expected. I.e., nothing I can definitively call her out on. This is a PhD student entering her third year, and I'm worried that she's slipping. I just don't know how to broach this respectfully. | ifwv0hg | ifwvjx6 | 1,657,662,625 | 1,657,662,840 | 6 | 10 | As a manager, the big issue I see with your student's work, based on your description, boils down to communication. Sometimes things take longer than expected. But when that happens, she should come to you, as far in advance of the deadline as possible, and tell you that she is likely going to miss the deadline, what difficulties she is running into, what she plans to do about it, and what a revised timeline will likely be. We can't always meet deadlines. That's just reality. But we can tell in advance when we won't be able to meet a deadline, and it is our responsibility to let those in charge know BEFORE the deadline arrives. It is also our responsibility to provide updated timelines, details about why things are taking longer, and a solution oriented plan for how we will get things back on track. Doing this is a big part of being a professional, regardless of the type of work. I would focus on this when you talk with her. She should come to you with problems earlier. She should not wait until the deadline to speak up. Fixing the communication issue will fix other issues. Is she hitting a brick wall figuring out something new? If so, she can bring it up with you early, you'll know about it, and you can help her. Do things just take her longer than you both expect? You'll get a window into why that is. Is she not putting in the hours she needs to? There's no excuse for saying it's not done on the day it's due. She will need details, earlier in the process, to excuse not getting it done, and she won't have those if she doesn't put in the time. | I typed this as a reply to /u/the_y_files but decided to leave it as a top level comment so you would be sure to see it. You can try to get to the bottom of what is causing her slowness by having her let you know as soon as she knows she's not going to make the deadline and why. Depending on when you hear from her and about what, it becomes clear extremely quickly whether she's 1) running into legitimate problems, 2) underperforming despite diligence, or 3) slacking off. You could also use more of a shared decision making model for deadlines, so when a deadline changes, it is also on her for having misestimated. This has the bonus of making her a better project manager which will be an excellent skill for most any early-career job she ends up in after her PhD. It may also be worth having a separate meeting to frankly say to her that you were hoping that she'd be producing work at a faster pace by this point in her training than she is and open a dialogue about what she thinks she needs from you to improve. Even though you suspect that slacking may be a contributing factor, you should come at this with the benefit of the doubt that it's a competence issue and with the humility to accept that the problem may be you having unrealistic expectations for what an *average* 3rd year PhD student can produce. | 0 | 215 | 1.666667 |
vxjo08 | askacademia_train | 0.93 | How to talk to a grad student about productivity issues? I'm paying one of my grad students for 40 hours of work per week, and I feel like I'm getting barely half of that. How do I politely approach her on this subject without sounding like I'm micromanaging? I'm fairly new to academia, so I haven't really had to deal with this before. Most of what she's currently working on is funded from an internal pot of money, so it's not like she's missing external deadlines from sponsors. I will tell her that I want a certain model estimated by so-and-so, and when that time comes she'll tell me that she was having issues with the software, or the model was giving errors, or that it's taking longer to converge than she expected. I.e., nothing I can definitively call her out on. This is a PhD student entering her third year, and I'm worried that she's slipping. I just don't know how to broach this respectfully. | ifwrur1 | ifwvjx6 | 1,657,661,349 | 1,657,662,840 | 4 | 10 | Is this dissertation -related work or is it an RAship on a project external to her dissertation work? | I typed this as a reply to /u/the_y_files but decided to leave it as a top level comment so you would be sure to see it. You can try to get to the bottom of what is causing her slowness by having her let you know as soon as she knows she's not going to make the deadline and why. Depending on when you hear from her and about what, it becomes clear extremely quickly whether she's 1) running into legitimate problems, 2) underperforming despite diligence, or 3) slacking off. You could also use more of a shared decision making model for deadlines, so when a deadline changes, it is also on her for having misestimated. This has the bonus of making her a better project manager which will be an excellent skill for most any early-career job she ends up in after her PhD. It may also be worth having a separate meeting to frankly say to her that you were hoping that she'd be producing work at a faster pace by this point in her training than she is and open a dialogue about what she thinks she needs from you to improve. Even though you suspect that slacking may be a contributing factor, you should come at this with the benefit of the doubt that it's a competence issue and with the humility to accept that the problem may be you having unrealistic expectations for what an *average* 3rd year PhD student can produce. | 0 | 1,491 | 2.5 |
vxjo08 | askacademia_train | 0.93 | How to talk to a grad student about productivity issues? I'm paying one of my grad students for 40 hours of work per week, and I feel like I'm getting barely half of that. How do I politely approach her on this subject without sounding like I'm micromanaging? I'm fairly new to academia, so I haven't really had to deal with this before. Most of what she's currently working on is funded from an internal pot of money, so it's not like she's missing external deadlines from sponsors. I will tell her that I want a certain model estimated by so-and-so, and when that time comes she'll tell me that she was having issues with the software, or the model was giving errors, or that it's taking longer to converge than she expected. I.e., nothing I can definitively call her out on. This is a PhD student entering her third year, and I'm worried that she's slipping. I just don't know how to broach this respectfully. | ifwvjx6 | ifwlua7 | 1,657,662,840 | 1,657,658,974 | 10 | 3 | I typed this as a reply to /u/the_y_files but decided to leave it as a top level comment so you would be sure to see it. You can try to get to the bottom of what is causing her slowness by having her let you know as soon as she knows she's not going to make the deadline and why. Depending on when you hear from her and about what, it becomes clear extremely quickly whether she's 1) running into legitimate problems, 2) underperforming despite diligence, or 3) slacking off. You could also use more of a shared decision making model for deadlines, so when a deadline changes, it is also on her for having misestimated. This has the bonus of making her a better project manager which will be an excellent skill for most any early-career job she ends up in after her PhD. It may also be worth having a separate meeting to frankly say to her that you were hoping that she'd be producing work at a faster pace by this point in her training than she is and open a dialogue about what she thinks she needs from you to improve. Even though you suspect that slacking may be a contributing factor, you should come at this with the benefit of the doubt that it's a competence issue and with the humility to accept that the problem may be you having unrealistic expectations for what an *average* 3rd year PhD student can produce. | Just keep it to the facts. She isn't meeting deadlines. This needs to be fixed. Does she need help with modeling because you're finding errors. etc. | 1 | 3,866 | 3.333333 |
vxjo08 | askacademia_train | 0.93 | How to talk to a grad student about productivity issues? I'm paying one of my grad students for 40 hours of work per week, and I feel like I'm getting barely half of that. How do I politely approach her on this subject without sounding like I'm micromanaging? I'm fairly new to academia, so I haven't really had to deal with this before. Most of what she's currently working on is funded from an internal pot of money, so it's not like she's missing external deadlines from sponsors. I will tell her that I want a certain model estimated by so-and-so, and when that time comes she'll tell me that she was having issues with the software, or the model was giving errors, or that it's taking longer to converge than she expected. I.e., nothing I can definitively call her out on. This is a PhD student entering her third year, and I'm worried that she's slipping. I just don't know how to broach this respectfully. | ifx2dnx | ifwv0hg | 1,657,665,771 | 1,657,662,625 | 8 | 6 | How often do you have check ins? I will typically alert my PI the instant I realize that I won’t be able to meet a deadline or set up a model appropriately (like if I’m missing a variable in my version of the dataset). It could be that she isn’t flagging issues like this as often as you would like. Or that things take her longer to do than you would expect — and maybe you could be providing some pedagogy of your own there, to help her overcome roadblocks ? | As a manager, the big issue I see with your student's work, based on your description, boils down to communication. Sometimes things take longer than expected. But when that happens, she should come to you, as far in advance of the deadline as possible, and tell you that she is likely going to miss the deadline, what difficulties she is running into, what she plans to do about it, and what a revised timeline will likely be. We can't always meet deadlines. That's just reality. But we can tell in advance when we won't be able to meet a deadline, and it is our responsibility to let those in charge know BEFORE the deadline arrives. It is also our responsibility to provide updated timelines, details about why things are taking longer, and a solution oriented plan for how we will get things back on track. Doing this is a big part of being a professional, regardless of the type of work. I would focus on this when you talk with her. She should come to you with problems earlier. She should not wait until the deadline to speak up. Fixing the communication issue will fix other issues. Is she hitting a brick wall figuring out something new? If so, she can bring it up with you early, you'll know about it, and you can help her. Do things just take her longer than you both expect? You'll get a window into why that is. Is she not putting in the hours she needs to? There's no excuse for saying it's not done on the day it's due. She will need details, earlier in the process, to excuse not getting it done, and she won't have those if she doesn't put in the time. | 1 | 3,146 | 1.333333 |
vxjo08 | askacademia_train | 0.93 | How to talk to a grad student about productivity issues? I'm paying one of my grad students for 40 hours of work per week, and I feel like I'm getting barely half of that. How do I politely approach her on this subject without sounding like I'm micromanaging? I'm fairly new to academia, so I haven't really had to deal with this before. Most of what she's currently working on is funded from an internal pot of money, so it's not like she's missing external deadlines from sponsors. I will tell her that I want a certain model estimated by so-and-so, and when that time comes she'll tell me that she was having issues with the software, or the model was giving errors, or that it's taking longer to converge than she expected. I.e., nothing I can definitively call her out on. This is a PhD student entering her third year, and I'm worried that she's slipping. I just don't know how to broach this respectfully. | ifwrur1 | ifx2dnx | 1,657,661,349 | 1,657,665,771 | 4 | 8 | Is this dissertation -related work or is it an RAship on a project external to her dissertation work? | How often do you have check ins? I will typically alert my PI the instant I realize that I won’t be able to meet a deadline or set up a model appropriately (like if I’m missing a variable in my version of the dataset). It could be that she isn’t flagging issues like this as often as you would like. Or that things take her longer to do than you would expect — and maybe you could be providing some pedagogy of your own there, to help her overcome roadblocks ? | 0 | 4,422 | 2 |
vxjo08 | askacademia_train | 0.93 | How to talk to a grad student about productivity issues? I'm paying one of my grad students for 40 hours of work per week, and I feel like I'm getting barely half of that. How do I politely approach her on this subject without sounding like I'm micromanaging? I'm fairly new to academia, so I haven't really had to deal with this before. Most of what she's currently working on is funded from an internal pot of money, so it's not like she's missing external deadlines from sponsors. I will tell her that I want a certain model estimated by so-and-so, and when that time comes she'll tell me that she was having issues with the software, or the model was giving errors, or that it's taking longer to converge than she expected. I.e., nothing I can definitively call her out on. This is a PhD student entering her third year, and I'm worried that she's slipping. I just don't know how to broach this respectfully. | ifwlua7 | ifx2dnx | 1,657,658,974 | 1,657,665,771 | 3 | 8 | Just keep it to the facts. She isn't meeting deadlines. This needs to be fixed. Does she need help with modeling because you're finding errors. etc. | How often do you have check ins? I will typically alert my PI the instant I realize that I won’t be able to meet a deadline or set up a model appropriately (like if I’m missing a variable in my version of the dataset). It could be that she isn’t flagging issues like this as often as you would like. Or that things take her longer to do than you would expect — and maybe you could be providing some pedagogy of your own there, to help her overcome roadblocks ? | 0 | 6,797 | 2.666667 |
vxjo08 | askacademia_train | 0.93 | How to talk to a grad student about productivity issues? I'm paying one of my grad students for 40 hours of work per week, and I feel like I'm getting barely half of that. How do I politely approach her on this subject without sounding like I'm micromanaging? I'm fairly new to academia, so I haven't really had to deal with this before. Most of what she's currently working on is funded from an internal pot of money, so it's not like she's missing external deadlines from sponsors. I will tell her that I want a certain model estimated by so-and-so, and when that time comes she'll tell me that she was having issues with the software, or the model was giving errors, or that it's taking longer to converge than she expected. I.e., nothing I can definitively call her out on. This is a PhD student entering her third year, and I'm worried that she's slipping. I just don't know how to broach this respectfully. | ifwrur1 | ifwv0hg | 1,657,661,349 | 1,657,662,625 | 4 | 6 | Is this dissertation -related work or is it an RAship on a project external to her dissertation work? | As a manager, the big issue I see with your student's work, based on your description, boils down to communication. Sometimes things take longer than expected. But when that happens, she should come to you, as far in advance of the deadline as possible, and tell you that she is likely going to miss the deadline, what difficulties she is running into, what she plans to do about it, and what a revised timeline will likely be. We can't always meet deadlines. That's just reality. But we can tell in advance when we won't be able to meet a deadline, and it is our responsibility to let those in charge know BEFORE the deadline arrives. It is also our responsibility to provide updated timelines, details about why things are taking longer, and a solution oriented plan for how we will get things back on track. Doing this is a big part of being a professional, regardless of the type of work. I would focus on this when you talk with her. She should come to you with problems earlier. She should not wait until the deadline to speak up. Fixing the communication issue will fix other issues. Is she hitting a brick wall figuring out something new? If so, she can bring it up with you early, you'll know about it, and you can help her. Do things just take her longer than you both expect? You'll get a window into why that is. Is she not putting in the hours she needs to? There's no excuse for saying it's not done on the day it's due. She will need details, earlier in the process, to excuse not getting it done, and she won't have those if she doesn't put in the time. | 0 | 1,276 | 1.5 |
vxjo08 | askacademia_train | 0.93 | How to talk to a grad student about productivity issues? I'm paying one of my grad students for 40 hours of work per week, and I feel like I'm getting barely half of that. How do I politely approach her on this subject without sounding like I'm micromanaging? I'm fairly new to academia, so I haven't really had to deal with this before. Most of what she's currently working on is funded from an internal pot of money, so it's not like she's missing external deadlines from sponsors. I will tell her that I want a certain model estimated by so-and-so, and when that time comes she'll tell me that she was having issues with the software, or the model was giving errors, or that it's taking longer to converge than she expected. I.e., nothing I can definitively call her out on. This is a PhD student entering her third year, and I'm worried that she's slipping. I just don't know how to broach this respectfully. | ifwlua7 | ifwv0hg | 1,657,658,974 | 1,657,662,625 | 3 | 6 | Just keep it to the facts. She isn't meeting deadlines. This needs to be fixed. Does she need help with modeling because you're finding errors. etc. | As a manager, the big issue I see with your student's work, based on your description, boils down to communication. Sometimes things take longer than expected. But when that happens, she should come to you, as far in advance of the deadline as possible, and tell you that she is likely going to miss the deadline, what difficulties she is running into, what she plans to do about it, and what a revised timeline will likely be. We can't always meet deadlines. That's just reality. But we can tell in advance when we won't be able to meet a deadline, and it is our responsibility to let those in charge know BEFORE the deadline arrives. It is also our responsibility to provide updated timelines, details about why things are taking longer, and a solution oriented plan for how we will get things back on track. Doing this is a big part of being a professional, regardless of the type of work. I would focus on this when you talk with her. She should come to you with problems earlier. She should not wait until the deadline to speak up. Fixing the communication issue will fix other issues. Is she hitting a brick wall figuring out something new? If so, she can bring it up with you early, you'll know about it, and you can help her. Do things just take her longer than you both expect? You'll get a window into why that is. Is she not putting in the hours she needs to? There's no excuse for saying it's not done on the day it's due. She will need details, earlier in the process, to excuse not getting it done, and she won't have those if she doesn't put in the time. | 0 | 3,651 | 2 |
vxjo08 | askacademia_train | 0.93 | How to talk to a grad student about productivity issues? I'm paying one of my grad students for 40 hours of work per week, and I feel like I'm getting barely half of that. How do I politely approach her on this subject without sounding like I'm micromanaging? I'm fairly new to academia, so I haven't really had to deal with this before. Most of what she's currently working on is funded from an internal pot of money, so it's not like she's missing external deadlines from sponsors. I will tell her that I want a certain model estimated by so-and-so, and when that time comes she'll tell me that she was having issues with the software, or the model was giving errors, or that it's taking longer to converge than she expected. I.e., nothing I can definitively call her out on. This is a PhD student entering her third year, and I'm worried that she's slipping. I just don't know how to broach this respectfully. | ifxd2pg | ifwrur1 | 1,657,670,430 | 1,657,661,349 | 6 | 4 | I have students doing large nonlinear simulations across multiple software packages. As someone said, convergence can take a week. Heck, we were tuning simulations supposedly to replace experiments but at first the sims took almost as long. A thought: Ask her to give weekly presentations of everything she has tried, win lose or draw. I had students do this to ensure they were working but also to keep a catalog of what does and doesn’t work. I was finding that they would try them retry the same things, having forgotten they did them or did something similar already . | Is this dissertation -related work or is it an RAship on a project external to her dissertation work? | 1 | 9,081 | 1.5 |
vxjo08 | askacademia_train | 0.93 | How to talk to a grad student about productivity issues? I'm paying one of my grad students for 40 hours of work per week, and I feel like I'm getting barely half of that. How do I politely approach her on this subject without sounding like I'm micromanaging? I'm fairly new to academia, so I haven't really had to deal with this before. Most of what she's currently working on is funded from an internal pot of money, so it's not like she's missing external deadlines from sponsors. I will tell her that I want a certain model estimated by so-and-so, and when that time comes she'll tell me that she was having issues with the software, or the model was giving errors, or that it's taking longer to converge than she expected. I.e., nothing I can definitively call her out on. This is a PhD student entering her third year, and I'm worried that she's slipping. I just don't know how to broach this respectfully. | ifxd2pg | ifwlua7 | 1,657,670,430 | 1,657,658,974 | 6 | 3 | I have students doing large nonlinear simulations across multiple software packages. As someone said, convergence can take a week. Heck, we were tuning simulations supposedly to replace experiments but at first the sims took almost as long. A thought: Ask her to give weekly presentations of everything she has tried, win lose or draw. I had students do this to ensure they were working but also to keep a catalog of what does and doesn’t work. I was finding that they would try them retry the same things, having forgotten they did them or did something similar already . | Just keep it to the facts. She isn't meeting deadlines. This needs to be fixed. Does she need help with modeling because you're finding errors. etc. | 1 | 11,456 | 2 |
vxjo08 | askacademia_train | 0.93 | How to talk to a grad student about productivity issues? I'm paying one of my grad students for 40 hours of work per week, and I feel like I'm getting barely half of that. How do I politely approach her on this subject without sounding like I'm micromanaging? I'm fairly new to academia, so I haven't really had to deal with this before. Most of what she's currently working on is funded from an internal pot of money, so it's not like she's missing external deadlines from sponsors. I will tell her that I want a certain model estimated by so-and-so, and when that time comes she'll tell me that she was having issues with the software, or the model was giving errors, or that it's taking longer to converge than she expected. I.e., nothing I can definitively call her out on. This is a PhD student entering her third year, and I'm worried that she's slipping. I just don't know how to broach this respectfully. | ifx4oli | ifxd2pg | 1,657,666,752 | 1,657,670,430 | 4 | 6 | >paying one of my grad students for 40 hours of work per week, and I feel like I'm getting barely half of that >PhD student entering her third year I'm guessing she's done with coursework and teaching requirements? Has she passed the qualifying exam or is some of her attention and focus needed there? Does she have a dissertation committee that requires regular meetings? I remember that when I was in grad school I had to present every 6-12 months, depending on how far in I was, for the committee to evaluate the student's progression towards completion. If there's a meeting coming up soon, that can be a topic to discuss with the other members and then address with the student. >having issues with the software, or the model was giving errors, or that it's taking longer to converge than she expected. I mean, that's sometimes how it is. If it seems that there are consistent problems in a certain area, like programming to adjust the model or a lack of important skills/knowledge, then reach out to colleagues/collaborators to arrange for additional training and/or mentorship so that she is better prepared to overcome these hurdles and can do so more quickly. | I have students doing large nonlinear simulations across multiple software packages. As someone said, convergence can take a week. Heck, we were tuning simulations supposedly to replace experiments but at first the sims took almost as long. A thought: Ask her to give weekly presentations of everything she has tried, win lose or draw. I had students do this to ensure they were working but also to keep a catalog of what does and doesn’t work. I was finding that they would try them retry the same things, having forgotten they did them or did something similar already . | 0 | 3,678 | 1.5 |
vxjo08 | askacademia_train | 0.93 | How to talk to a grad student about productivity issues? I'm paying one of my grad students for 40 hours of work per week, and I feel like I'm getting barely half of that. How do I politely approach her on this subject without sounding like I'm micromanaging? I'm fairly new to academia, so I haven't really had to deal with this before. Most of what she's currently working on is funded from an internal pot of money, so it's not like she's missing external deadlines from sponsors. I will tell her that I want a certain model estimated by so-and-so, and when that time comes she'll tell me that she was having issues with the software, or the model was giving errors, or that it's taking longer to converge than she expected. I.e., nothing I can definitively call her out on. This is a PhD student entering her third year, and I'm worried that she's slipping. I just don't know how to broach this respectfully. | ifxd2pg | ifx6o6b | 1,657,670,430 | 1,657,667,611 | 6 | 3 | I have students doing large nonlinear simulations across multiple software packages. As someone said, convergence can take a week. Heck, we were tuning simulations supposedly to replace experiments but at first the sims took almost as long. A thought: Ask her to give weekly presentations of everything she has tried, win lose or draw. I had students do this to ensure they were working but also to keep a catalog of what does and doesn’t work. I was finding that they would try them retry the same things, having forgotten they did them or did something similar already . | I think the answer completely depends on how you philosophically see your role and hers. Is it possible that she has slowed down because she isn't happy there, or is this due to training and management? Do you see her as the employee and you as the manager? If so, then the appropriate level of management is to provide all the resources they need, identify where her performance is lacking, set clear expectations with time goals that are reasonable, and then proceed towards disciplinary-like action if she cannot meet or exceed your standards. Do you see her as a student and you as her coach/guide/advisor? Then the strategies are similar, but ultimately very different in approach. Equally as important, how does she see this dynamic? Does this dynamic align with why she even came to grad school? Because if she expected a coach/guide/advisor and instead has a manager, then of course she would be slow and resistive. There are so many ways to approach management and coaching... and it's your choice on how to approach your own lab. But I would say this: Do you think she came to graduate school to do a slow and piss-poor job? Obviously not. So why would she act this way? Address the issue; ask her directly. I don't think anyone comes to grad school with the goal of being a bad student. We come because we hope to be successful at whatever it is we are after. We all tend to work hard and do our best when there is strong support and we feel valued. And we tend to slow down and do poorly when we feel as if we're just a cog and a technician doing someone's bidding. | 1 | 2,819 | 2 |
vxjo08 | askacademia_train | 0.93 | How to talk to a grad student about productivity issues? I'm paying one of my grad students for 40 hours of work per week, and I feel like I'm getting barely half of that. How do I politely approach her on this subject without sounding like I'm micromanaging? I'm fairly new to academia, so I haven't really had to deal with this before. Most of what she's currently working on is funded from an internal pot of money, so it's not like she's missing external deadlines from sponsors. I will tell her that I want a certain model estimated by so-and-so, and when that time comes she'll tell me that she was having issues with the software, or the model was giving errors, or that it's taking longer to converge than she expected. I.e., nothing I can definitively call her out on. This is a PhD student entering her third year, and I'm worried that she's slipping. I just don't know how to broach this respectfully. | ifwrur1 | ifwlua7 | 1,657,661,349 | 1,657,658,974 | 4 | 3 | Is this dissertation -related work or is it an RAship on a project external to her dissertation work? | Just keep it to the facts. She isn't meeting deadlines. This needs to be fixed. Does she need help with modeling because you're finding errors. etc. | 1 | 2,375 | 1.333333 |
vxjo08 | askacademia_train | 0.93 | How to talk to a grad student about productivity issues? I'm paying one of my grad students for 40 hours of work per week, and I feel like I'm getting barely half of that. How do I politely approach her on this subject without sounding like I'm micromanaging? I'm fairly new to academia, so I haven't really had to deal with this before. Most of what she's currently working on is funded from an internal pot of money, so it's not like she's missing external deadlines from sponsors. I will tell her that I want a certain model estimated by so-and-so, and when that time comes she'll tell me that she was having issues with the software, or the model was giving errors, or that it's taking longer to converge than she expected. I.e., nothing I can definitively call her out on. This is a PhD student entering her third year, and I'm worried that she's slipping. I just don't know how to broach this respectfully. | ifyj8eq | ifwlua7 | 1,657,692,252 | 1,657,658,974 | 4 | 3 | The best phrase I've found is, "Okay, show me" when people say they are having problems because those are things I can help with. So then we work on the problem together, and the student will come to me when they are stuck again in the future rather than losing time. | Just keep it to the facts. She isn't meeting deadlines. This needs to be fixed. Does she need help with modeling because you're finding errors. etc. | 1 | 33,278 | 1.333333 |
vxjo08 | askacademia_train | 0.93 | How to talk to a grad student about productivity issues? I'm paying one of my grad students for 40 hours of work per week, and I feel like I'm getting barely half of that. How do I politely approach her on this subject without sounding like I'm micromanaging? I'm fairly new to academia, so I haven't really had to deal with this before. Most of what she's currently working on is funded from an internal pot of money, so it's not like she's missing external deadlines from sponsors. I will tell her that I want a certain model estimated by so-and-so, and when that time comes she'll tell me that she was having issues with the software, or the model was giving errors, or that it's taking longer to converge than she expected. I.e., nothing I can definitively call her out on. This is a PhD student entering her third year, and I'm worried that she's slipping. I just don't know how to broach this respectfully. | ifx6o6b | ifyj8eq | 1,657,667,611 | 1,657,692,252 | 3 | 4 | I think the answer completely depends on how you philosophically see your role and hers. Is it possible that she has slowed down because she isn't happy there, or is this due to training and management? Do you see her as the employee and you as the manager? If so, then the appropriate level of management is to provide all the resources they need, identify where her performance is lacking, set clear expectations with time goals that are reasonable, and then proceed towards disciplinary-like action if she cannot meet or exceed your standards. Do you see her as a student and you as her coach/guide/advisor? Then the strategies are similar, but ultimately very different in approach. Equally as important, how does she see this dynamic? Does this dynamic align with why she even came to grad school? Because if she expected a coach/guide/advisor and instead has a manager, then of course she would be slow and resistive. There are so many ways to approach management and coaching... and it's your choice on how to approach your own lab. But I would say this: Do you think she came to graduate school to do a slow and piss-poor job? Obviously not. So why would she act this way? Address the issue; ask her directly. I don't think anyone comes to grad school with the goal of being a bad student. We come because we hope to be successful at whatever it is we are after. We all tend to work hard and do our best when there is strong support and we feel valued. And we tend to slow down and do poorly when we feel as if we're just a cog and a technician doing someone's bidding. | The best phrase I've found is, "Okay, show me" when people say they are having problems because those are things I can help with. So then we work on the problem together, and the student will come to me when they are stuck again in the future rather than losing time. | 0 | 24,641 | 1.333333 |
vxjo08 | askacademia_train | 0.93 | How to talk to a grad student about productivity issues? I'm paying one of my grad students for 40 hours of work per week, and I feel like I'm getting barely half of that. How do I politely approach her on this subject without sounding like I'm micromanaging? I'm fairly new to academia, so I haven't really had to deal with this before. Most of what she's currently working on is funded from an internal pot of money, so it's not like she's missing external deadlines from sponsors. I will tell her that I want a certain model estimated by so-and-so, and when that time comes she'll tell me that she was having issues with the software, or the model was giving errors, or that it's taking longer to converge than she expected. I.e., nothing I can definitively call her out on. This is a PhD student entering her third year, and I'm worried that she's slipping. I just don't know how to broach this respectfully. | ifwlua7 | ifx4oli | 1,657,658,974 | 1,657,666,752 | 3 | 4 | Just keep it to the facts. She isn't meeting deadlines. This needs to be fixed. Does she need help with modeling because you're finding errors. etc. | >paying one of my grad students for 40 hours of work per week, and I feel like I'm getting barely half of that >PhD student entering her third year I'm guessing she's done with coursework and teaching requirements? Has she passed the qualifying exam or is some of her attention and focus needed there? Does she have a dissertation committee that requires regular meetings? I remember that when I was in grad school I had to present every 6-12 months, depending on how far in I was, for the committee to evaluate the student's progression towards completion. If there's a meeting coming up soon, that can be a topic to discuss with the other members and then address with the student. >having issues with the software, or the model was giving errors, or that it's taking longer to converge than she expected. I mean, that's sometimes how it is. If it seems that there are consistent problems in a certain area, like programming to adjust the model or a lack of important skills/knowledge, then reach out to colleagues/collaborators to arrange for additional training and/or mentorship so that she is better prepared to overcome these hurdles and can do so more quickly. | 0 | 7,778 | 1.333333 |
upod7g | askacademia_train | 0.91 | Why do we have famous scientist-influencers like Neil Degrasse Tyson and Carl Sagan but no famous philisopher-influencers or other humanities experts on the same level? I originally wanted to ask this question in a philosophy subreddit but I don't think the rules allow for it. I think the question could apply to lots of other humanities though. Not sure if the tag should be interdisciplinary or humanities. | i8mdmj9 | i8m9pjf | 1,652,563,218 | 1,652,561,405 | 139 | 126 | They're called "public intellectuals," and there are so, so many from the humanities. Top 100 Public Intellectuals | Peter Singer and fellow philosophers (e.g. Toby Ord, Will MacAskill, etc.) have arguably influenced the movement of many billions of dollars. | 1 | 1,813 | 1.103175 |
upod7g | askacademia_train | 0.91 | Why do we have famous scientist-influencers like Neil Degrasse Tyson and Carl Sagan but no famous philisopher-influencers or other humanities experts on the same level? I originally wanted to ask this question in a philosophy subreddit but I don't think the rules allow for it. I think the question could apply to lots of other humanities though. Not sure if the tag should be interdisciplinary or humanities. | i8m2cwy | i8mdmj9 | 1,652,558,021 | 1,652,563,218 | 91 | 139 | The answer to your question, I think, is that our culture is dominated by the belief that only scientists in the "hard" sciences like STEM fields are worthy of respect and worth listening to. Too many believe the humanities or social sciences are bullshit. It's not exactly that they think humanities experts aren't smart. It's just that they don't think being an expert in these things makes them worth listening to on matters of public/political importance. So there's a belief, for example, that a philosophy professor really can't offer any greater insight into what's going on in the world than a TV pundit can. Worse yet, they think hard scientists (like Dr. Oz) understand *everything* and his opinion on any topic is very much worth listening to, he will also be a great political leader, etc.... | They're called "public intellectuals," and there are so, so many from the humanities. Top 100 Public Intellectuals | 0 | 5,197 | 1.527473 |
upod7g | askacademia_train | 0.91 | Why do we have famous scientist-influencers like Neil Degrasse Tyson and Carl Sagan but no famous philisopher-influencers or other humanities experts on the same level? I originally wanted to ask this question in a philosophy subreddit but I don't think the rules allow for it. I think the question could apply to lots of other humanities though. Not sure if the tag should be interdisciplinary or humanities. | i8mdmj9 | i8m4j9k | 1,652,563,218 | 1,652,559,021 | 139 | 42 | They're called "public intellectuals," and there are so, so many from the humanities. Top 100 Public Intellectuals | Mary Beard | 1 | 4,197 | 3.309524 |
upod7g | askacademia_train | 0.91 | Why do we have famous scientist-influencers like Neil Degrasse Tyson and Carl Sagan but no famous philisopher-influencers or other humanities experts on the same level? I originally wanted to ask this question in a philosophy subreddit but I don't think the rules allow for it. I think the question could apply to lots of other humanities though. Not sure if the tag should be interdisciplinary or humanities. | i8mdmj9 | i8m2dge | 1,652,563,218 | 1,652,558,028 | 139 | 32 | They're called "public intellectuals," and there are so, so many from the humanities. Top 100 Public Intellectuals | Why doesn't math have a popularizer? Because ordinary people can't understand it. It's too technical. The same is true for physics, but popularizers like Tyson can dumb it down to the point where people *think* they understand it. Philosophy is all about the gnitty gritty specifics in arguments. Most ordinary people don't want to sit through those any more than they want to learn how to take an integral. | 1 | 5,190 | 4.34375 |
upod7g | askacademia_train | 0.91 | Why do we have famous scientist-influencers like Neil Degrasse Tyson and Carl Sagan but no famous philisopher-influencers or other humanities experts on the same level? I originally wanted to ask this question in a philosophy subreddit but I don't think the rules allow for it. I think the question could apply to lots of other humanities though. Not sure if the tag should be interdisciplinary or humanities. | i8mdmj9 | i8m4th2 | 1,652,563,218 | 1,652,559,153 | 139 | 7 | They're called "public intellectuals," and there are so, so many from the humanities. Top 100 Public Intellectuals | Henry Louis Gates? | 1 | 4,065 | 19.857143 |
upod7g | askacademia_train | 0.91 | Why do we have famous scientist-influencers like Neil Degrasse Tyson and Carl Sagan but no famous philisopher-influencers or other humanities experts on the same level? I originally wanted to ask this question in a philosophy subreddit but I don't think the rules allow for it. I think the question could apply to lots of other humanities though. Not sure if the tag should be interdisciplinary or humanities. | i8m2cwy | i8m9pjf | 1,652,558,021 | 1,652,561,405 | 91 | 126 | The answer to your question, I think, is that our culture is dominated by the belief that only scientists in the "hard" sciences like STEM fields are worthy of respect and worth listening to. Too many believe the humanities or social sciences are bullshit. It's not exactly that they think humanities experts aren't smart. It's just that they don't think being an expert in these things makes them worth listening to on matters of public/political importance. So there's a belief, for example, that a philosophy professor really can't offer any greater insight into what's going on in the world than a TV pundit can. Worse yet, they think hard scientists (like Dr. Oz) understand *everything* and his opinion on any topic is very much worth listening to, he will also be a great political leader, etc.... | Peter Singer and fellow philosophers (e.g. Toby Ord, Will MacAskill, etc.) have arguably influenced the movement of many billions of dollars. | 0 | 3,384 | 1.384615 |
upod7g | askacademia_train | 0.91 | Why do we have famous scientist-influencers like Neil Degrasse Tyson and Carl Sagan but no famous philisopher-influencers or other humanities experts on the same level? I originally wanted to ask this question in a philosophy subreddit but I don't think the rules allow for it. I think the question could apply to lots of other humanities though. Not sure if the tag should be interdisciplinary or humanities. | i8m4j9k | i8m9pjf | 1,652,559,021 | 1,652,561,405 | 42 | 126 | Mary Beard | Peter Singer and fellow philosophers (e.g. Toby Ord, Will MacAskill, etc.) have arguably influenced the movement of many billions of dollars. | 0 | 2,384 | 3 |
upod7g | askacademia_train | 0.91 | Why do we have famous scientist-influencers like Neil Degrasse Tyson and Carl Sagan but no famous philisopher-influencers or other humanities experts on the same level? I originally wanted to ask this question in a philosophy subreddit but I don't think the rules allow for it. I think the question could apply to lots of other humanities though. Not sure if the tag should be interdisciplinary or humanities. | i8m9pjf | i8m2dge | 1,652,561,405 | 1,652,558,028 | 126 | 32 | Peter Singer and fellow philosophers (e.g. Toby Ord, Will MacAskill, etc.) have arguably influenced the movement of many billions of dollars. | Why doesn't math have a popularizer? Because ordinary people can't understand it. It's too technical. The same is true for physics, but popularizers like Tyson can dumb it down to the point where people *think* they understand it. Philosophy is all about the gnitty gritty specifics in arguments. Most ordinary people don't want to sit through those any more than they want to learn how to take an integral. | 1 | 3,377 | 3.9375 |
upod7g | askacademia_train | 0.91 | Why do we have famous scientist-influencers like Neil Degrasse Tyson and Carl Sagan but no famous philisopher-influencers or other humanities experts on the same level? I originally wanted to ask this question in a philosophy subreddit but I don't think the rules allow for it. I think the question could apply to lots of other humanities though. Not sure if the tag should be interdisciplinary or humanities. | i8m9pjf | i8m4th2 | 1,652,561,405 | 1,652,559,153 | 126 | 7 | Peter Singer and fellow philosophers (e.g. Toby Ord, Will MacAskill, etc.) have arguably influenced the movement of many billions of dollars. | Henry Louis Gates? | 1 | 2,252 | 18 |
upod7g | askacademia_train | 0.91 | Why do we have famous scientist-influencers like Neil Degrasse Tyson and Carl Sagan but no famous philisopher-influencers or other humanities experts on the same level? I originally wanted to ask this question in a philosophy subreddit but I don't think the rules allow for it. I think the question could apply to lots of other humanities though. Not sure if the tag should be interdisciplinary or humanities. | i8m2dge | i8m4j9k | 1,652,558,028 | 1,652,559,021 | 32 | 42 | Why doesn't math have a popularizer? Because ordinary people can't understand it. It's too technical. The same is true for physics, but popularizers like Tyson can dumb it down to the point where people *think* they understand it. Philosophy is all about the gnitty gritty specifics in arguments. Most ordinary people don't want to sit through those any more than they want to learn how to take an integral. | Mary Beard | 0 | 993 | 1.3125 |
upod7g | askacademia_train | 0.91 | Why do we have famous scientist-influencers like Neil Degrasse Tyson and Carl Sagan but no famous philisopher-influencers or other humanities experts on the same level? I originally wanted to ask this question in a philosophy subreddit but I don't think the rules allow for it. I think the question could apply to lots of other humanities though. Not sure if the tag should be interdisciplinary or humanities. | i8n96u7 | i8o5no5 | 1,652,578,546 | 1,652,599,103 | 10 | 11 | Michel Foucault, Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir | We don't even have many science influencers in fields outside of astronomy and particle physics. Biology, chemistry, and especially maths get sidelined most of the time, because they don't seem sci-fi-ish, and the humanities have even less of an obvious wow factor. | 0 | 20,557 | 1.1 |
upod7g | askacademia_train | 0.91 | Why do we have famous scientist-influencers like Neil Degrasse Tyson and Carl Sagan but no famous philisopher-influencers or other humanities experts on the same level? I originally wanted to ask this question in a philosophy subreddit but I don't think the rules allow for it. I think the question could apply to lots of other humanities though. Not sure if the tag should be interdisciplinary or humanities. | i8m4th2 | i8o5no5 | 1,652,559,153 | 1,652,599,103 | 7 | 11 | Henry Louis Gates? | We don't even have many science influencers in fields outside of astronomy and particle physics. Biology, chemistry, and especially maths get sidelined most of the time, because they don't seem sci-fi-ish, and the humanities have even less of an obvious wow factor. | 0 | 39,950 | 1.571429 |
upod7g | askacademia_train | 0.91 | Why do we have famous scientist-influencers like Neil Degrasse Tyson and Carl Sagan but no famous philisopher-influencers or other humanities experts on the same level? I originally wanted to ask this question in a philosophy subreddit but I don't think the rules allow for it. I think the question could apply to lots of other humanities though. Not sure if the tag should be interdisciplinary or humanities. | i8ndnso | i8o5no5 | 1,652,580,854 | 1,652,599,103 | 6 | 11 | I think because we many only respect scholars after they pass? Or the fact we always cite really old people? I'm thinking about how many people have extended germinal theories, like Foucault's, Judith Butler, etc. but the field still goes back to talking about the old theories. Or perhaps its just field specific. I'm in the humanities and my partner is in STEM and the amount of funding they get in comparison is just wild. I cant actually imagine being a humanities scholar with our measely funding and having the energy to also be an influencer. (Also, Neil Degras Tyson has sexual assault allegations against him so he may not be the best role model) | We don't even have many science influencers in fields outside of astronomy and particle physics. Biology, chemistry, and especially maths get sidelined most of the time, because they don't seem sci-fi-ish, and the humanities have even less of an obvious wow factor. | 0 | 18,249 | 1.833333 |
upod7g | askacademia_train | 0.91 | Why do we have famous scientist-influencers like Neil Degrasse Tyson and Carl Sagan but no famous philisopher-influencers or other humanities experts on the same level? I originally wanted to ask this question in a philosophy subreddit but I don't think the rules allow for it. I think the question could apply to lots of other humanities though. Not sure if the tag should be interdisciplinary or humanities. | i8mh8ws | i8o5no5 | 1,652,564,884 | 1,652,599,103 | 7 | 11 | Probably because they aren't recognized, a lot of them are women/queer/racialized and systematically kept out of the hard sciences. Additionally, arts and humanities are underfunded. Judith Butler, bell hooks, Naomi Klein, Audre Lorde, Maya Angelou... | We don't even have many science influencers in fields outside of astronomy and particle physics. Biology, chemistry, and especially maths get sidelined most of the time, because they don't seem sci-fi-ish, and the humanities have even less of an obvious wow factor. | 0 | 34,219 | 1.571429 |
upod7g | askacademia_train | 0.91 | Why do we have famous scientist-influencers like Neil Degrasse Tyson and Carl Sagan but no famous philisopher-influencers or other humanities experts on the same level? I originally wanted to ask this question in a philosophy subreddit but I don't think the rules allow for it. I think the question could apply to lots of other humanities though. Not sure if the tag should be interdisciplinary or humanities. | i8nlrjk | i8o5no5 | 1,652,585,299 | 1,652,599,103 | 4 | 11 | bell hooks, Maya Angelou, Gloria Steinem (maybe), Sigmund Freud (lord help us all), Carl Jung, Karl Marx, all those Greek and Roman philosophers they make us study, Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr. How far back in history are we going. Are we looking specifically at public figures? Oh, and Paul Krugman. EDIT: And Robert Reich. I had to read a book on education systems from that guy. | We don't even have many science influencers in fields outside of astronomy and particle physics. Biology, chemistry, and especially maths get sidelined most of the time, because they don't seem sci-fi-ish, and the humanities have even less of an obvious wow factor. | 0 | 13,804 | 2.75 |
upod7g | askacademia_train | 0.91 | Why do we have famous scientist-influencers like Neil Degrasse Tyson and Carl Sagan but no famous philisopher-influencers or other humanities experts on the same level? I originally wanted to ask this question in a philosophy subreddit but I don't think the rules allow for it. I think the question could apply to lots of other humanities though. Not sure if the tag should be interdisciplinary or humanities. | i8mo9sq | i8o5no5 | 1,652,568,177 | 1,652,599,103 | 4 | 11 | Alan Watts. | We don't even have many science influencers in fields outside of astronomy and particle physics. Biology, chemistry, and especially maths get sidelined most of the time, because they don't seem sci-fi-ish, and the humanities have even less of an obvious wow factor. | 0 | 30,926 | 2.75 |
upod7g | askacademia_train | 0.91 | Why do we have famous scientist-influencers like Neil Degrasse Tyson and Carl Sagan but no famous philisopher-influencers or other humanities experts on the same level? I originally wanted to ask this question in a philosophy subreddit but I don't think the rules allow for it. I think the question could apply to lots of other humanities though. Not sure if the tag should be interdisciplinary or humanities. | i8mvwvb | i8o5no5 | 1,652,571,766 | 1,652,599,103 | 3 | 11 | I'll venture this: proto lit geeks and history geeks are less likely to be watching TV as their proto space-geek contemporaries (maybe). That said, I have those who are humanities trained among my colleagues--two who regularly contribute columns to the NYT, another who has hosted her own Channel 4 shows and the like. So, certainly at some level if not NOVA. | We don't even have many science influencers in fields outside of astronomy and particle physics. Biology, chemistry, and especially maths get sidelined most of the time, because they don't seem sci-fi-ish, and the humanities have even less of an obvious wow factor. | 0 | 27,337 | 3.666667 |
upod7g | askacademia_train | 0.91 | Why do we have famous scientist-influencers like Neil Degrasse Tyson and Carl Sagan but no famous philisopher-influencers or other humanities experts on the same level? I originally wanted to ask this question in a philosophy subreddit but I don't think the rules allow for it. I think the question could apply to lots of other humanities though. Not sure if the tag should be interdisciplinary or humanities. | i8mzg44 | i8o5no5 | 1,652,573,529 | 1,652,599,103 | 3 | 11 | the cold war | We don't even have many science influencers in fields outside of astronomy and particle physics. Biology, chemistry, and especially maths get sidelined most of the time, because they don't seem sci-fi-ish, and the humanities have even less of an obvious wow factor. | 0 | 25,574 | 3.666667 |
upod7g | askacademia_train | 0.91 | Why do we have famous scientist-influencers like Neil Degrasse Tyson and Carl Sagan but no famous philisopher-influencers or other humanities experts on the same level? I originally wanted to ask this question in a philosophy subreddit but I don't think the rules allow for it. I think the question could apply to lots of other humanities though. Not sure if the tag should be interdisciplinary or humanities. | i8m4th2 | i8n96u7 | 1,652,559,153 | 1,652,578,546 | 7 | 10 | Henry Louis Gates? | Michel Foucault, Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir | 0 | 19,393 | 1.428571 |
upod7g | askacademia_train | 0.91 | Why do we have famous scientist-influencers like Neil Degrasse Tyson and Carl Sagan but no famous philisopher-influencers or other humanities experts on the same level? I originally wanted to ask this question in a philosophy subreddit but I don't think the rules allow for it. I think the question could apply to lots of other humanities though. Not sure if the tag should be interdisciplinary or humanities. | i8mh8ws | i8n96u7 | 1,652,564,884 | 1,652,578,546 | 7 | 10 | Probably because they aren't recognized, a lot of them are women/queer/racialized and systematically kept out of the hard sciences. Additionally, arts and humanities are underfunded. Judith Butler, bell hooks, Naomi Klein, Audre Lorde, Maya Angelou... | Michel Foucault, Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir | 0 | 13,662 | 1.428571 |
upod7g | askacademia_train | 0.91 | Why do we have famous scientist-influencers like Neil Degrasse Tyson and Carl Sagan but no famous philisopher-influencers or other humanities experts on the same level? I originally wanted to ask this question in a philosophy subreddit but I don't think the rules allow for it. I think the question could apply to lots of other humanities though. Not sure if the tag should be interdisciplinary or humanities. | i8n96u7 | i8mo9sq | 1,652,578,546 | 1,652,568,177 | 10 | 4 | Michel Foucault, Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir | Alan Watts. | 1 | 10,369 | 2.5 |
upod7g | askacademia_train | 0.91 | Why do we have famous scientist-influencers like Neil Degrasse Tyson and Carl Sagan but no famous philisopher-influencers or other humanities experts on the same level? I originally wanted to ask this question in a philosophy subreddit but I don't think the rules allow for it. I think the question could apply to lots of other humanities though. Not sure if the tag should be interdisciplinary or humanities. | i8n96u7 | i8mvwvb | 1,652,578,546 | 1,652,571,766 | 10 | 3 | Michel Foucault, Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir | I'll venture this: proto lit geeks and history geeks are less likely to be watching TV as their proto space-geek contemporaries (maybe). That said, I have those who are humanities trained among my colleagues--two who regularly contribute columns to the NYT, another who has hosted her own Channel 4 shows and the like. So, certainly at some level if not NOVA. | 1 | 6,780 | 3.333333 |
upod7g | askacademia_train | 0.91 | Why do we have famous scientist-influencers like Neil Degrasse Tyson and Carl Sagan but no famous philisopher-influencers or other humanities experts on the same level? I originally wanted to ask this question in a philosophy subreddit but I don't think the rules allow for it. I think the question could apply to lots of other humanities though. Not sure if the tag should be interdisciplinary or humanities. | i8mzg44 | i8n96u7 | 1,652,573,529 | 1,652,578,546 | 3 | 10 | the cold war | Michel Foucault, Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir | 0 | 5,017 | 3.333333 |
upod7g | askacademia_train | 0.91 | Why do we have famous scientist-influencers like Neil Degrasse Tyson and Carl Sagan but no famous philisopher-influencers or other humanities experts on the same level? I originally wanted to ask this question in a philosophy subreddit but I don't think the rules allow for it. I think the question could apply to lots of other humanities though. Not sure if the tag should be interdisciplinary or humanities. | i8m4th2 | i8o9wao | 1,652,559,153 | 1,652,602,704 | 7 | 10 | Henry Louis Gates? | The question is kind of vague; first, it's unclear if you mean *living* philosophers and second, it's unclear if you mean *academic/analytic* philosophers. With regards to the first, things like human rights, animal rights, political socialism, liberalism, capitalism, sex & gender, feminism, scientific method, computer science, linguistics, etc. are all ideas which have come into the social milieu through various philosophers (mostly dead). Whether people realise it or not, the vast majority of beliefs are articulated by a philosopher at some previous point which has trickled down to them (e.g., Plato, Kant, Aristotle, Descartes, Sartre, Mill, Wittgenstein, Rand). But we're only talking about *living*, then there's more likely to be cultural reasons for this (e.g., science gives 'real true answers' while philosophy is just 'all opinions'), so when a scientist says something it's given more credence by society than the philosopher. But even then, Peter Singer, Slavoj Zizek, Martha Nussbaum have been incredibly influential. With regards to the second, if we're just talking about 'philosophers' in a loose sense, I'd argue that all of the "science" influencers are influencers *qua* philosophy. The things people are interested in hearing them say aren't scientific truths, but end up being values, ethics, metaphysics, ontology, epistemology, etc. - things squarely in the domain of philosophy. Sure, we might get drawn in by their scientific explanations, but its the *philosophical upshots* they draw which we remember and are ultimately interested in. So when they're being influencers they are wearing a philosophy hat - they become philosophers. But if we mean academic/analytic philosophers, there's a variety of reasons for this; society doesn't value what we do, what we do is incredibly specialised and of little interest to people outside of academia, and by and large we're incredibly dry and precise. Also there's little agreement across any subfield of philosophy; people don't want to think about questions, they just want answers, but for every utilitarian there's a kantian, a virtue ethicist, a contractarian, etc. - so society just thinks its all relative/pointless. | 0 | 43,551 | 1.428571 |
upod7g | askacademia_train | 0.91 | Why do we have famous scientist-influencers like Neil Degrasse Tyson and Carl Sagan but no famous philisopher-influencers or other humanities experts on the same level? I originally wanted to ask this question in a philosophy subreddit but I don't think the rules allow for it. I think the question could apply to lots of other humanities though. Not sure if the tag should be interdisciplinary or humanities. | i8ndnso | i8o9wao | 1,652,580,854 | 1,652,602,704 | 6 | 10 | I think because we many only respect scholars after they pass? Or the fact we always cite really old people? I'm thinking about how many people have extended germinal theories, like Foucault's, Judith Butler, etc. but the field still goes back to talking about the old theories. Or perhaps its just field specific. I'm in the humanities and my partner is in STEM and the amount of funding they get in comparison is just wild. I cant actually imagine being a humanities scholar with our measely funding and having the energy to also be an influencer. (Also, Neil Degras Tyson has sexual assault allegations against him so he may not be the best role model) | The question is kind of vague; first, it's unclear if you mean *living* philosophers and second, it's unclear if you mean *academic/analytic* philosophers. With regards to the first, things like human rights, animal rights, political socialism, liberalism, capitalism, sex & gender, feminism, scientific method, computer science, linguistics, etc. are all ideas which have come into the social milieu through various philosophers (mostly dead). Whether people realise it or not, the vast majority of beliefs are articulated by a philosopher at some previous point which has trickled down to them (e.g., Plato, Kant, Aristotle, Descartes, Sartre, Mill, Wittgenstein, Rand). But we're only talking about *living*, then there's more likely to be cultural reasons for this (e.g., science gives 'real true answers' while philosophy is just 'all opinions'), so when a scientist says something it's given more credence by society than the philosopher. But even then, Peter Singer, Slavoj Zizek, Martha Nussbaum have been incredibly influential. With regards to the second, if we're just talking about 'philosophers' in a loose sense, I'd argue that all of the "science" influencers are influencers *qua* philosophy. The things people are interested in hearing them say aren't scientific truths, but end up being values, ethics, metaphysics, ontology, epistemology, etc. - things squarely in the domain of philosophy. Sure, we might get drawn in by their scientific explanations, but its the *philosophical upshots* they draw which we remember and are ultimately interested in. So when they're being influencers they are wearing a philosophy hat - they become philosophers. But if we mean academic/analytic philosophers, there's a variety of reasons for this; society doesn't value what we do, what we do is incredibly specialised and of little interest to people outside of academia, and by and large we're incredibly dry and precise. Also there's little agreement across any subfield of philosophy; people don't want to think about questions, they just want answers, but for every utilitarian there's a kantian, a virtue ethicist, a contractarian, etc. - so society just thinks its all relative/pointless. | 0 | 21,850 | 1.666667 |
upod7g | askacademia_train | 0.91 | Why do we have famous scientist-influencers like Neil Degrasse Tyson and Carl Sagan but no famous philisopher-influencers or other humanities experts on the same level? I originally wanted to ask this question in a philosophy subreddit but I don't think the rules allow for it. I think the question could apply to lots of other humanities though. Not sure if the tag should be interdisciplinary or humanities. | i8o9wao | i8mh8ws | 1,652,602,704 | 1,652,564,884 | 10 | 7 | The question is kind of vague; first, it's unclear if you mean *living* philosophers and second, it's unclear if you mean *academic/analytic* philosophers. With regards to the first, things like human rights, animal rights, political socialism, liberalism, capitalism, sex & gender, feminism, scientific method, computer science, linguistics, etc. are all ideas which have come into the social milieu through various philosophers (mostly dead). Whether people realise it or not, the vast majority of beliefs are articulated by a philosopher at some previous point which has trickled down to them (e.g., Plato, Kant, Aristotle, Descartes, Sartre, Mill, Wittgenstein, Rand). But we're only talking about *living*, then there's more likely to be cultural reasons for this (e.g., science gives 'real true answers' while philosophy is just 'all opinions'), so when a scientist says something it's given more credence by society than the philosopher. But even then, Peter Singer, Slavoj Zizek, Martha Nussbaum have been incredibly influential. With regards to the second, if we're just talking about 'philosophers' in a loose sense, I'd argue that all of the "science" influencers are influencers *qua* philosophy. The things people are interested in hearing them say aren't scientific truths, but end up being values, ethics, metaphysics, ontology, epistemology, etc. - things squarely in the domain of philosophy. Sure, we might get drawn in by their scientific explanations, but its the *philosophical upshots* they draw which we remember and are ultimately interested in. So when they're being influencers they are wearing a philosophy hat - they become philosophers. But if we mean academic/analytic philosophers, there's a variety of reasons for this; society doesn't value what we do, what we do is incredibly specialised and of little interest to people outside of academia, and by and large we're incredibly dry and precise. Also there's little agreement across any subfield of philosophy; people don't want to think about questions, they just want answers, but for every utilitarian there's a kantian, a virtue ethicist, a contractarian, etc. - so society just thinks its all relative/pointless. | Probably because they aren't recognized, a lot of them are women/queer/racialized and systematically kept out of the hard sciences. Additionally, arts and humanities are underfunded. Judith Butler, bell hooks, Naomi Klein, Audre Lorde, Maya Angelou... | 1 | 37,820 | 1.428571 |
upod7g | askacademia_train | 0.91 | Why do we have famous scientist-influencers like Neil Degrasse Tyson and Carl Sagan but no famous philisopher-influencers or other humanities experts on the same level? I originally wanted to ask this question in a philosophy subreddit but I don't think the rules allow for it. I think the question could apply to lots of other humanities though. Not sure if the tag should be interdisciplinary or humanities. | i8nlrjk | i8o9wao | 1,652,585,299 | 1,652,602,704 | 4 | 10 | bell hooks, Maya Angelou, Gloria Steinem (maybe), Sigmund Freud (lord help us all), Carl Jung, Karl Marx, all those Greek and Roman philosophers they make us study, Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr. How far back in history are we going. Are we looking specifically at public figures? Oh, and Paul Krugman. EDIT: And Robert Reich. I had to read a book on education systems from that guy. | The question is kind of vague; first, it's unclear if you mean *living* philosophers and second, it's unclear if you mean *academic/analytic* philosophers. With regards to the first, things like human rights, animal rights, political socialism, liberalism, capitalism, sex & gender, feminism, scientific method, computer science, linguistics, etc. are all ideas which have come into the social milieu through various philosophers (mostly dead). Whether people realise it or not, the vast majority of beliefs are articulated by a philosopher at some previous point which has trickled down to them (e.g., Plato, Kant, Aristotle, Descartes, Sartre, Mill, Wittgenstein, Rand). But we're only talking about *living*, then there's more likely to be cultural reasons for this (e.g., science gives 'real true answers' while philosophy is just 'all opinions'), so when a scientist says something it's given more credence by society than the philosopher. But even then, Peter Singer, Slavoj Zizek, Martha Nussbaum have been incredibly influential. With regards to the second, if we're just talking about 'philosophers' in a loose sense, I'd argue that all of the "science" influencers are influencers *qua* philosophy. The things people are interested in hearing them say aren't scientific truths, but end up being values, ethics, metaphysics, ontology, epistemology, etc. - things squarely in the domain of philosophy. Sure, we might get drawn in by their scientific explanations, but its the *philosophical upshots* they draw which we remember and are ultimately interested in. So when they're being influencers they are wearing a philosophy hat - they become philosophers. But if we mean academic/analytic philosophers, there's a variety of reasons for this; society doesn't value what we do, what we do is incredibly specialised and of little interest to people outside of academia, and by and large we're incredibly dry and precise. Also there's little agreement across any subfield of philosophy; people don't want to think about questions, they just want answers, but for every utilitarian there's a kantian, a virtue ethicist, a contractarian, etc. - so society just thinks its all relative/pointless. | 0 | 17,405 | 2.5 |
upod7g | askacademia_train | 0.91 | Why do we have famous scientist-influencers like Neil Degrasse Tyson and Carl Sagan but no famous philisopher-influencers or other humanities experts on the same level? I originally wanted to ask this question in a philosophy subreddit but I don't think the rules allow for it. I think the question could apply to lots of other humanities though. Not sure if the tag should be interdisciplinary or humanities. | i8o9wao | i8o9f33 | 1,652,602,704 | 1,652,602,286 | 10 | 5 | The question is kind of vague; first, it's unclear if you mean *living* philosophers and second, it's unclear if you mean *academic/analytic* philosophers. With regards to the first, things like human rights, animal rights, political socialism, liberalism, capitalism, sex & gender, feminism, scientific method, computer science, linguistics, etc. are all ideas which have come into the social milieu through various philosophers (mostly dead). Whether people realise it or not, the vast majority of beliefs are articulated by a philosopher at some previous point which has trickled down to them (e.g., Plato, Kant, Aristotle, Descartes, Sartre, Mill, Wittgenstein, Rand). But we're only talking about *living*, then there's more likely to be cultural reasons for this (e.g., science gives 'real true answers' while philosophy is just 'all opinions'), so when a scientist says something it's given more credence by society than the philosopher. But even then, Peter Singer, Slavoj Zizek, Martha Nussbaum have been incredibly influential. With regards to the second, if we're just talking about 'philosophers' in a loose sense, I'd argue that all of the "science" influencers are influencers *qua* philosophy. The things people are interested in hearing them say aren't scientific truths, but end up being values, ethics, metaphysics, ontology, epistemology, etc. - things squarely in the domain of philosophy. Sure, we might get drawn in by their scientific explanations, but its the *philosophical upshots* they draw which we remember and are ultimately interested in. So when they're being influencers they are wearing a philosophy hat - they become philosophers. But if we mean academic/analytic philosophers, there's a variety of reasons for this; society doesn't value what we do, what we do is incredibly specialised and of little interest to people outside of academia, and by and large we're incredibly dry and precise. Also there's little agreement across any subfield of philosophy; people don't want to think about questions, they just want answers, but for every utilitarian there's a kantian, a virtue ethicist, a contractarian, etc. - so society just thinks its all relative/pointless. | I think that niche is taken by the YouTubers; any established philosopher will have to outdo Contrapoints (Natalie Wynn) and Philosophy Tube (Abigail Thorne) to gain any ground with a mainstream audience. (And good luck, given their production value.) There's also the issue of humanities/social science experts being 'too close to home' in some ways. The methodical, impersonal scientific approach that many of them take can clash with the expectations of non-academic audiences. And some are just plain un-"woke": in my field (linguistics), John McWhorter is pretty big on the pop science scene, but he's also very vocal about academic freedom and critical of certain types of activism. And people hate him for it. With the physicists, they have the luxury of bringing 0% of their actual work into their pop science and just saying "look at this pretty picture of stars" or "what if the universe isn't real?????" and people eat it up. It also helps that 1) since they don't study people, audiences have nothing to get performatively offended over; and 2) the star pictures etc. make mainstream audiences feel like they've engaged with science. Since the average person sees no science (or worth) in philosophy/social sciences/humanities, they will never get this same feeling in these fields regardless of their level of engagement. YouTube is an exception because the viewers are engaged in the visuals and the personalities without having to commit to a philosophy lesson. Maybe things are different in a society that values the 'softer' sciences, but I can't speak for them. | 1 | 418 | 2 |
upod7g | askacademia_train | 0.91 | Why do we have famous scientist-influencers like Neil Degrasse Tyson and Carl Sagan but no famous philisopher-influencers or other humanities experts on the same level? I originally wanted to ask this question in a philosophy subreddit but I don't think the rules allow for it. I think the question could apply to lots of other humanities though. Not sure if the tag should be interdisciplinary or humanities. | i8mo9sq | i8o9wao | 1,652,568,177 | 1,652,602,704 | 4 | 10 | Alan Watts. | The question is kind of vague; first, it's unclear if you mean *living* philosophers and second, it's unclear if you mean *academic/analytic* philosophers. With regards to the first, things like human rights, animal rights, political socialism, liberalism, capitalism, sex & gender, feminism, scientific method, computer science, linguistics, etc. are all ideas which have come into the social milieu through various philosophers (mostly dead). Whether people realise it or not, the vast majority of beliefs are articulated by a philosopher at some previous point which has trickled down to them (e.g., Plato, Kant, Aristotle, Descartes, Sartre, Mill, Wittgenstein, Rand). But we're only talking about *living*, then there's more likely to be cultural reasons for this (e.g., science gives 'real true answers' while philosophy is just 'all opinions'), so when a scientist says something it's given more credence by society than the philosopher. But even then, Peter Singer, Slavoj Zizek, Martha Nussbaum have been incredibly influential. With regards to the second, if we're just talking about 'philosophers' in a loose sense, I'd argue that all of the "science" influencers are influencers *qua* philosophy. The things people are interested in hearing them say aren't scientific truths, but end up being values, ethics, metaphysics, ontology, epistemology, etc. - things squarely in the domain of philosophy. Sure, we might get drawn in by their scientific explanations, but its the *philosophical upshots* they draw which we remember and are ultimately interested in. So when they're being influencers they are wearing a philosophy hat - they become philosophers. But if we mean academic/analytic philosophers, there's a variety of reasons for this; society doesn't value what we do, what we do is incredibly specialised and of little interest to people outside of academia, and by and large we're incredibly dry and precise. Also there's little agreement across any subfield of philosophy; people don't want to think about questions, they just want answers, but for every utilitarian there's a kantian, a virtue ethicist, a contractarian, etc. - so society just thinks its all relative/pointless. | 0 | 34,527 | 2.5 |
upod7g | askacademia_train | 0.91 | Why do we have famous scientist-influencers like Neil Degrasse Tyson and Carl Sagan but no famous philisopher-influencers or other humanities experts on the same level? I originally wanted to ask this question in a philosophy subreddit but I don't think the rules allow for it. I think the question could apply to lots of other humanities though. Not sure if the tag should be interdisciplinary or humanities. | i8o9wao | i8mvwvb | 1,652,602,704 | 1,652,571,766 | 10 | 3 | The question is kind of vague; first, it's unclear if you mean *living* philosophers and second, it's unclear if you mean *academic/analytic* philosophers. With regards to the first, things like human rights, animal rights, political socialism, liberalism, capitalism, sex & gender, feminism, scientific method, computer science, linguistics, etc. are all ideas which have come into the social milieu through various philosophers (mostly dead). Whether people realise it or not, the vast majority of beliefs are articulated by a philosopher at some previous point which has trickled down to them (e.g., Plato, Kant, Aristotle, Descartes, Sartre, Mill, Wittgenstein, Rand). But we're only talking about *living*, then there's more likely to be cultural reasons for this (e.g., science gives 'real true answers' while philosophy is just 'all opinions'), so when a scientist says something it's given more credence by society than the philosopher. But even then, Peter Singer, Slavoj Zizek, Martha Nussbaum have been incredibly influential. With regards to the second, if we're just talking about 'philosophers' in a loose sense, I'd argue that all of the "science" influencers are influencers *qua* philosophy. The things people are interested in hearing them say aren't scientific truths, but end up being values, ethics, metaphysics, ontology, epistemology, etc. - things squarely in the domain of philosophy. Sure, we might get drawn in by their scientific explanations, but its the *philosophical upshots* they draw which we remember and are ultimately interested in. So when they're being influencers they are wearing a philosophy hat - they become philosophers. But if we mean academic/analytic philosophers, there's a variety of reasons for this; society doesn't value what we do, what we do is incredibly specialised and of little interest to people outside of academia, and by and large we're incredibly dry and precise. Also there's little agreement across any subfield of philosophy; people don't want to think about questions, they just want answers, but for every utilitarian there's a kantian, a virtue ethicist, a contractarian, etc. - so society just thinks its all relative/pointless. | I'll venture this: proto lit geeks and history geeks are less likely to be watching TV as their proto space-geek contemporaries (maybe). That said, I have those who are humanities trained among my colleagues--two who regularly contribute columns to the NYT, another who has hosted her own Channel 4 shows and the like. So, certainly at some level if not NOVA. | 1 | 30,938 | 3.333333 |
upod7g | askacademia_train | 0.91 | Why do we have famous scientist-influencers like Neil Degrasse Tyson and Carl Sagan but no famous philisopher-influencers or other humanities experts on the same level? I originally wanted to ask this question in a philosophy subreddit but I don't think the rules allow for it. I think the question could apply to lots of other humanities though. Not sure if the tag should be interdisciplinary or humanities. | i8o9wao | i8mzg44 | 1,652,602,704 | 1,652,573,529 | 10 | 3 | The question is kind of vague; first, it's unclear if you mean *living* philosophers and second, it's unclear if you mean *academic/analytic* philosophers. With regards to the first, things like human rights, animal rights, political socialism, liberalism, capitalism, sex & gender, feminism, scientific method, computer science, linguistics, etc. are all ideas which have come into the social milieu through various philosophers (mostly dead). Whether people realise it or not, the vast majority of beliefs are articulated by a philosopher at some previous point which has trickled down to them (e.g., Plato, Kant, Aristotle, Descartes, Sartre, Mill, Wittgenstein, Rand). But we're only talking about *living*, then there's more likely to be cultural reasons for this (e.g., science gives 'real true answers' while philosophy is just 'all opinions'), so when a scientist says something it's given more credence by society than the philosopher. But even then, Peter Singer, Slavoj Zizek, Martha Nussbaum have been incredibly influential. With regards to the second, if we're just talking about 'philosophers' in a loose sense, I'd argue that all of the "science" influencers are influencers *qua* philosophy. The things people are interested in hearing them say aren't scientific truths, but end up being values, ethics, metaphysics, ontology, epistemology, etc. - things squarely in the domain of philosophy. Sure, we might get drawn in by their scientific explanations, but its the *philosophical upshots* they draw which we remember and are ultimately interested in. So when they're being influencers they are wearing a philosophy hat - they become philosophers. But if we mean academic/analytic philosophers, there's a variety of reasons for this; society doesn't value what we do, what we do is incredibly specialised and of little interest to people outside of academia, and by and large we're incredibly dry and precise. Also there's little agreement across any subfield of philosophy; people don't want to think about questions, they just want answers, but for every utilitarian there's a kantian, a virtue ethicist, a contractarian, etc. - so society just thinks its all relative/pointless. | the cold war | 1 | 29,175 | 3.333333 |
upod7g | askacademia_train | 0.91 | Why do we have famous scientist-influencers like Neil Degrasse Tyson and Carl Sagan but no famous philisopher-influencers or other humanities experts on the same level? I originally wanted to ask this question in a philosophy subreddit but I don't think the rules allow for it. I think the question could apply to lots of other humanities though. Not sure if the tag should be interdisciplinary or humanities. | i8ndnso | i8mo9sq | 1,652,580,854 | 1,652,568,177 | 6 | 4 | I think because we many only respect scholars after they pass? Or the fact we always cite really old people? I'm thinking about how many people have extended germinal theories, like Foucault's, Judith Butler, etc. but the field still goes back to talking about the old theories. Or perhaps its just field specific. I'm in the humanities and my partner is in STEM and the amount of funding they get in comparison is just wild. I cant actually imagine being a humanities scholar with our measely funding and having the energy to also be an influencer. (Also, Neil Degras Tyson has sexual assault allegations against him so he may not be the best role model) | Alan Watts. | 1 | 12,677 | 1.5 |
upod7g | askacademia_train | 0.91 | Why do we have famous scientist-influencers like Neil Degrasse Tyson and Carl Sagan but no famous philisopher-influencers or other humanities experts on the same level? I originally wanted to ask this question in a philosophy subreddit but I don't think the rules allow for it. I think the question could apply to lots of other humanities though. Not sure if the tag should be interdisciplinary or humanities. | i8ndnso | i8mvwvb | 1,652,580,854 | 1,652,571,766 | 6 | 3 | I think because we many only respect scholars after they pass? Or the fact we always cite really old people? I'm thinking about how many people have extended germinal theories, like Foucault's, Judith Butler, etc. but the field still goes back to talking about the old theories. Or perhaps its just field specific. I'm in the humanities and my partner is in STEM and the amount of funding they get in comparison is just wild. I cant actually imagine being a humanities scholar with our measely funding and having the energy to also be an influencer. (Also, Neil Degras Tyson has sexual assault allegations against him so he may not be the best role model) | I'll venture this: proto lit geeks and history geeks are less likely to be watching TV as their proto space-geek contemporaries (maybe). That said, I have those who are humanities trained among my colleagues--two who regularly contribute columns to the NYT, another who has hosted her own Channel 4 shows and the like. So, certainly at some level if not NOVA. | 1 | 9,088 | 2 |
upod7g | askacademia_train | 0.91 | Why do we have famous scientist-influencers like Neil Degrasse Tyson and Carl Sagan but no famous philisopher-influencers or other humanities experts on the same level? I originally wanted to ask this question in a philosophy subreddit but I don't think the rules allow for it. I think the question could apply to lots of other humanities though. Not sure if the tag should be interdisciplinary or humanities. | i8ndnso | i8mzg44 | 1,652,580,854 | 1,652,573,529 | 6 | 3 | I think because we many only respect scholars after they pass? Or the fact we always cite really old people? I'm thinking about how many people have extended germinal theories, like Foucault's, Judith Butler, etc. but the field still goes back to talking about the old theories. Or perhaps its just field specific. I'm in the humanities and my partner is in STEM and the amount of funding they get in comparison is just wild. I cant actually imagine being a humanities scholar with our measely funding and having the energy to also be an influencer. (Also, Neil Degras Tyson has sexual assault allegations against him so he may not be the best role model) | the cold war | 1 | 7,325 | 2 |
upod7g | askacademia_train | 0.91 | Why do we have famous scientist-influencers like Neil Degrasse Tyson and Carl Sagan but no famous philisopher-influencers or other humanities experts on the same level? I originally wanted to ask this question in a philosophy subreddit but I don't think the rules allow for it. I think the question could apply to lots of other humanities though. Not sure if the tag should be interdisciplinary or humanities. | i8nlrjk | i8o9f33 | 1,652,585,299 | 1,652,602,286 | 4 | 5 | bell hooks, Maya Angelou, Gloria Steinem (maybe), Sigmund Freud (lord help us all), Carl Jung, Karl Marx, all those Greek and Roman philosophers they make us study, Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr. How far back in history are we going. Are we looking specifically at public figures? Oh, and Paul Krugman. EDIT: And Robert Reich. I had to read a book on education systems from that guy. | I think that niche is taken by the YouTubers; any established philosopher will have to outdo Contrapoints (Natalie Wynn) and Philosophy Tube (Abigail Thorne) to gain any ground with a mainstream audience. (And good luck, given their production value.) There's also the issue of humanities/social science experts being 'too close to home' in some ways. The methodical, impersonal scientific approach that many of them take can clash with the expectations of non-academic audiences. And some are just plain un-"woke": in my field (linguistics), John McWhorter is pretty big on the pop science scene, but he's also very vocal about academic freedom and critical of certain types of activism. And people hate him for it. With the physicists, they have the luxury of bringing 0% of their actual work into their pop science and just saying "look at this pretty picture of stars" or "what if the universe isn't real?????" and people eat it up. It also helps that 1) since they don't study people, audiences have nothing to get performatively offended over; and 2) the star pictures etc. make mainstream audiences feel like they've engaged with science. Since the average person sees no science (or worth) in philosophy/social sciences/humanities, they will never get this same feeling in these fields regardless of their level of engagement. YouTube is an exception because the viewers are engaged in the visuals and the personalities without having to commit to a philosophy lesson. Maybe things are different in a society that values the 'softer' sciences, but I can't speak for them. | 0 | 16,987 | 1.25 |
upod7g | askacademia_train | 0.91 | Why do we have famous scientist-influencers like Neil Degrasse Tyson and Carl Sagan but no famous philisopher-influencers or other humanities experts on the same level? I originally wanted to ask this question in a philosophy subreddit but I don't think the rules allow for it. I think the question could apply to lots of other humanities though. Not sure if the tag should be interdisciplinary or humanities. | i8nlrjk | i8mvwvb | 1,652,585,299 | 1,652,571,766 | 4 | 3 | bell hooks, Maya Angelou, Gloria Steinem (maybe), Sigmund Freud (lord help us all), Carl Jung, Karl Marx, all those Greek and Roman philosophers they make us study, Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr. How far back in history are we going. Are we looking specifically at public figures? Oh, and Paul Krugman. EDIT: And Robert Reich. I had to read a book on education systems from that guy. | I'll venture this: proto lit geeks and history geeks are less likely to be watching TV as their proto space-geek contemporaries (maybe). That said, I have those who are humanities trained among my colleagues--two who regularly contribute columns to the NYT, another who has hosted her own Channel 4 shows and the like. So, certainly at some level if not NOVA. | 1 | 13,533 | 1.333333 |
upod7g | askacademia_train | 0.91 | Why do we have famous scientist-influencers like Neil Degrasse Tyson and Carl Sagan but no famous philisopher-influencers or other humanities experts on the same level? I originally wanted to ask this question in a philosophy subreddit but I don't think the rules allow for it. I think the question could apply to lots of other humanities though. Not sure if the tag should be interdisciplinary or humanities. | i8mzg44 | i8nlrjk | 1,652,573,529 | 1,652,585,299 | 3 | 4 | the cold war | bell hooks, Maya Angelou, Gloria Steinem (maybe), Sigmund Freud (lord help us all), Carl Jung, Karl Marx, all those Greek and Roman philosophers they make us study, Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr. How far back in history are we going. Are we looking specifically at public figures? Oh, and Paul Krugman. EDIT: And Robert Reich. I had to read a book on education systems from that guy. | 0 | 11,770 | 1.333333 |
upod7g | askacademia_train | 0.91 | Why do we have famous scientist-influencers like Neil Degrasse Tyson and Carl Sagan but no famous philisopher-influencers or other humanities experts on the same level? I originally wanted to ask this question in a philosophy subreddit but I don't think the rules allow for it. I think the question could apply to lots of other humanities though. Not sure if the tag should be interdisciplinary or humanities. | i8mo9sq | i8o9f33 | 1,652,568,177 | 1,652,602,286 | 4 | 5 | Alan Watts. | I think that niche is taken by the YouTubers; any established philosopher will have to outdo Contrapoints (Natalie Wynn) and Philosophy Tube (Abigail Thorne) to gain any ground with a mainstream audience. (And good luck, given their production value.) There's also the issue of humanities/social science experts being 'too close to home' in some ways. The methodical, impersonal scientific approach that many of them take can clash with the expectations of non-academic audiences. And some are just plain un-"woke": in my field (linguistics), John McWhorter is pretty big on the pop science scene, but he's also very vocal about academic freedom and critical of certain types of activism. And people hate him for it. With the physicists, they have the luxury of bringing 0% of their actual work into their pop science and just saying "look at this pretty picture of stars" or "what if the universe isn't real?????" and people eat it up. It also helps that 1) since they don't study people, audiences have nothing to get performatively offended over; and 2) the star pictures etc. make mainstream audiences feel like they've engaged with science. Since the average person sees no science (or worth) in philosophy/social sciences/humanities, they will never get this same feeling in these fields regardless of their level of engagement. YouTube is an exception because the viewers are engaged in the visuals and the personalities without having to commit to a philosophy lesson. Maybe things are different in a society that values the 'softer' sciences, but I can't speak for them. | 0 | 34,109 | 1.25 |
upod7g | askacademia_train | 0.91 | Why do we have famous scientist-influencers like Neil Degrasse Tyson and Carl Sagan but no famous philisopher-influencers or other humanities experts on the same level? I originally wanted to ask this question in a philosophy subreddit but I don't think the rules allow for it. I think the question could apply to lots of other humanities though. Not sure if the tag should be interdisciplinary or humanities. | i8o9f33 | i8mvwvb | 1,652,602,286 | 1,652,571,766 | 5 | 3 | I think that niche is taken by the YouTubers; any established philosopher will have to outdo Contrapoints (Natalie Wynn) and Philosophy Tube (Abigail Thorne) to gain any ground with a mainstream audience. (And good luck, given their production value.) There's also the issue of humanities/social science experts being 'too close to home' in some ways. The methodical, impersonal scientific approach that many of them take can clash with the expectations of non-academic audiences. And some are just plain un-"woke": in my field (linguistics), John McWhorter is pretty big on the pop science scene, but he's also very vocal about academic freedom and critical of certain types of activism. And people hate him for it. With the physicists, they have the luxury of bringing 0% of their actual work into their pop science and just saying "look at this pretty picture of stars" or "what if the universe isn't real?????" and people eat it up. It also helps that 1) since they don't study people, audiences have nothing to get performatively offended over; and 2) the star pictures etc. make mainstream audiences feel like they've engaged with science. Since the average person sees no science (or worth) in philosophy/social sciences/humanities, they will never get this same feeling in these fields regardless of their level of engagement. YouTube is an exception because the viewers are engaged in the visuals and the personalities without having to commit to a philosophy lesson. Maybe things are different in a society that values the 'softer' sciences, but I can't speak for them. | I'll venture this: proto lit geeks and history geeks are less likely to be watching TV as their proto space-geek contemporaries (maybe). That said, I have those who are humanities trained among my colleagues--two who regularly contribute columns to the NYT, another who has hosted her own Channel 4 shows and the like. So, certainly at some level if not NOVA. | 1 | 30,520 | 1.666667 |
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