I’m sorry, but you sound like a terrible, patronizing advisor; anyone who views their students as “cogs in the machine” is someone I would not want to work with.
Yes, professors work hard, but let’s not kid ourselves that they’re involved with the nitty-gritty research work. You just sound like someone who’s bitter at young people.
Again, kindly see my reply about attacking me personally. If you feel affronted by my calling grad students cogs, make a case for why they are not. I spend plenty of time shaping those cogs into fine researchers, and they're all better for it, so my results speak for themselves. But you're kidding yourself if you think a green 22 year old fresh out of undergrad is able to perform at a level much higher than a cog in a research lab. There's usually a researcher in there, but it takes a lot of work, usually years, to properly shape their minds.
I'm quite young myself so I don't understand why you would say I'm bitter at young people, but I guess it just goes to show I hit a nerve and you want to lash out at me even though you know nothing about me, not even my age. You want to form an opinion about me and my personality and my entire professional posture based on a rant go ahead, but keep it to yourself.
As for professors not being involved in the nitty gritty research, there's just no basis for this statement. Like I said I've spent almost a literal decade getting my research agenda up and running, and that's pretty much the common case. It takes at least 6 years to get tenure. Students joining me today are getting involved in a project that began when they were preteens. Students claiming full credit over research done at that point is pure hubris.
How do you think research labs come to be without professors getting involved in the "nitty gritty"? Research happens over a long timescale, longer than any one grad student's tenure.
"Yes, professors work hard, but let’s not kid ourselves that they’re involved with the nitty-gritty research work. You just sound like someone who’s bitter at young people."
This week I've:
- Worked on a research grant that doesn't have any students on it, so who else is doing the "nitty gritty research work"?
- Gone through a student's research code line-by-line to try to hunt down a particularly pernicious bug.
- Done a ton of data wrangling for another project to minimize the number of hands currently using a restricted-access server.
If the parent poster is painting with an overly broad brush, so are you.
>I’m sorry, but you sound like a terrible, patronizing advisor; anyone who views their students as “cogs in the machine” is someone I would not want to work with.
He pointed to the state of affairs, not how he treats them. Understand?
Yes, professors work hard, but let’s not kid ourselves that they’re involved with the nitty-gritty research work. You just sound like someone who’s bitter at young people.