In a bygone year, a prominent vertebrate paleontologist wrote this letter to his students after returning to campus from sabbatical. It should be required reading for any undergraduate who hopes to pursue a career in VP. Surviving in this field as a research scientist requires enthusiasm and activity; VP isn't really built to sustain tourists. I have X-ed out names and dates since the professor in question is still alive.
"Dear Students,
"Please accept this memorandum as my formal greeting to you on my return from study leave and at the start of the academic year 19XX-XX. This memorandum is intended to serve as well as a reminder of certain realities that may have faded during the past year, while I was away. I hope that you will take the contents of this reminder seriously, because they outline the expectations that I have for each of you during your entire tenure here as graduate students, as well as during the coming year.
"It is a reality, of course, that sometime in the future I will have to evaluate your performance as a young scholar, for a prospective employer, perhaps, or when you apply for a further degree. That is a fact of life and one that I take seriously, especially if you intend continuing in vertebrate paleontology in some capacity. You should known that I value motivation as the most desirable quality in students at your stage of development. I have no patience with unmotivated students. I have lots of patience with highly motivated students.
"The official work week of the University is 35 hours, for full-time employees (technicians, typists, clerks, etc.). That, however, is not the duration I expect for your work week, irrespective of the present status of your program (that is, whether or not you are taking courses and/or teaching and/or working for me and/or working on your own research project). If you are not taking courses and not teaching, then I expect that the time taken for your research will expand into the increased time that you now have at your disposal. Similarly, if your are taking courses and/or teaching, you are not relieved at all of responsibility for maintaining an active research program, in addition to meeting those other academic demands on your time: I suppose it is an old-fashioned idea, but I expect students (especially graduate students) to study, as well; for example, which of you regularly reads Systematic Zoology, Evolution, Paleontology, Journal of Paleontology, Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology, at a minimum? And which of you regularly scans the remainder of the literature that is relevant to vertebrate paleontology and evolution? Perhaps I'm mistaken, but I strongly suspect that none of you do!
"Let me remind you that your research program does not merely consist of identifying your fossils and writing up your species accounts. You are also supposed to be educating yourselves, on your own initiative, as a simple reflection of the interest you have in your subject. You are past the stage of merely following the directions given you by your instructors in class; that's what being an undergraduate is all about. Now, as a research scientist-in-training, you are supposed to be devoting some significant fraction of your waking time to for doing science: for example, each of you has a vast amount of reading to do (unless you know more than I do, and I strongly suspect that you do not), each of you must be able to identify your fossils, you must understand their phylogenetic and geographic significance, you must be able to interpret them stratigraphically (and to have the relevant stratigraphy under control, which I suspect you do not), you may have preparation of fossils to do, you have to catalogue your collection before you complete your degree, etc., etc. In short, you have to be very busy, but since my return here, I have seen little evidence that you are very busy, at least on your academic work. Quite frankly, I hope that this situation does not continue.
"If you wish your "academic" day to end at 5:00 pm, I suggest that you become a bank clerk, salesperson, auto mechanic or whatever, and that you do so without delay. If you believe that your "academic" week should be confined to the interval between Monday and Friday, you'd best be a genius, because you will not be able to meet my expectations otherwise (and as far as I know, none of us here are geniuses).
"I urge you each to "get with it", to do so immediately, and to continue to do so until the scheduled completion of your program, on a sustained basis. If you do not know what to do, we can talk about it, in continuation of your education. But do not make the error of supposing that I do not mean what I say; if you think not, I suggest that you speak with XXXX XXXX, now of the Department of Entomology. He's a pleasant fellow, but that helped him not at all."
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4 comments:
Ah, the story of my life. This is why I gave up blogging.
After reading this, I may just have to give up my blogging (among other things) as well when I hit Grad School. Still, it doesn't dissuade me from 'taking the plunge'.
I'd have to agree with most of that Jeff - it's a pretty good assessment of the facts of research and indeed the attitudes of many researchers with respect to their students. Cheers.
I suppose the "patience with MOTIVATED students" mantra is the life story of most college Professors especially in the students major and destined field. I've been learning that the hard way my first semester in college.
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