Just a quick thought before I get back to work. Often times I look too much at my adviser's faults, the key difficult one for me being a little late with meetings or just general busy-ness. But today I was again reminded of some of the really good qualities, and thought I should mention them.
The last week or so I've been working on a paper draft for a conference at which I'll be presenting, and it's been pretty tough to motivate for, the audience isn't one I'd usually expect, and so I have been getting discouraged easily. Every time this has happened, I've caught up with my adviser for a few minutes and talked about it. He's always really encouraging, and those quick meetings leave me ready to tackle it again and I find it a lot easier to keep going afterwards. Yesterday I sent him my current draft, and met up with him just a few minutes ago to discuss it. I really appreciate the way he offers really helpful constructive comments, and in a very non threatening way - sometimes I get really defensive to criticism, even constructive types, and that never happens with him. I left the meeting with a really good idea of what I needed to change and add, and that he thought my progress was very good.
So, I really appreciate that quality, and it makes it a lot easier to know I can approach him for feedback and get really useful information, without worrying about what he's going to think of it or me.
1 comment:
The things that you're describing are important --- and very rare (IMO) --- qualities in advisors.
I know I have a tendency for criticism that I intend to be constructive to sound more negative than I'd like. (I try to warn my students in advance that I mean things in a certain way even though they might occasionally sound tough.) With most students, I don't have a problem, but sometimes even if I try to make it clear that I mean the comments a certain way, the student may not end up taking them that way --- especially when they see a draft of their paper marked with tons of red comments. (I do try to adjust things with particular students. One always has to tweak one's advising style a little bit to work appropriately with a given student's style. That's often much easier said than done, but not all students can be advised in precisely the same way way.) Anyway, it's a rare gift (combining multiple good qualities) for an advisor to be able to get the necessary points across without appearing to come down on the student, so it's really good that your advisor has them. I'm sure this affects which students I get, because ones with thick skins (who know I don't mean academic criticisms personally) are probably better fits for me. I'm trying to tailor this to students better, but I'm experiencing a long, slow learning curve.
As for your advisor being busy all the time, that problem is an endemic one among just about all thesis advisors. There's just about no way to find an advisor who doesn't have that problem, and I wouldn't be surprised at all (in fact, I would expect it) that he finds that to be far more of a problem than most of his students do.
Also, I meant to offer this earlier, but if you want me to look at anything, let me know. When it's not my student, I am typically better about not microcriticizing. I can't offer anything close to the expertise your advisor can, but I'll do what I can if you want me to take a look at anything. One thing that may be especially useful is to show/discuss some of the materials to someone like Richard Murray from the controls community (and I think there could also be long-term benefits from interacting directly with him; among other things, a rec letter from him is worth a ton in certain communities and it may be worthwhile to have that in your pocket when you're deciding where to go after the Ph.D.).
Anyway, your SIAM Review paper looked really good, so although I haven't seen any of the new stuff, I'd be absolutely shocked if it were not also of extremely high quality.
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