I am an advisor. I have advisees. More than one even. I met with them for the first time, ostensibly to offer some advice on the first year of grad school. I blathered about a positive attitude, attending all talks in the department, volunteering to work on research projects to get their feet wet, and then promptly referred them to the Rulz. They are cool and smart — and I will henceforth say nothing about them.
As there is more than one advisee and my time is limited, I’ve been trying to think of ways to get them to support one another. I know a few students who all have the same advisor — they seem to work together in a weirdly cooperative way. They support one another, attend each other’s talks, it appears they socialize together, edit each other’s work, and I’ve yet to see any competition (and I’ve been looking hard). They are all good and generous people but I also suspect an advisor effect — I can’t decide how strong it is but I have some hypotheses on mechanisms. I’ve also witnessed groups of advisees who are fairly competitive with one another — I suspect a bit of an advisor effect in these cases too (magnitude and mechanisms unclear). In most other cases, collections of advisees tend not to care about each other.
Is it useful to try and encourage your advisees to help each other? To what extent can advisors influence grad student cooperation (or competition)? A lot? A little? I purposely met with my new students in a group to try and facilitate this but beyond that, I’m stuck. Is this a complete waste of time since their interests, goals, and talents are likely to diverge sharply in the near future?
I’m a grad student and I wish people would respond to this, because I’m very interested in the answer. I definitely don’t consider myself competitive with my advisor’s other advisees, but nor do I have the kind of relationship NSP describes witnessing (editing each others’ stuff, etc.). I do have that relationship with some friends, none of whom have my advisor. And maybe that’s partly because my own advisor’s advisees do a very broad range of stuff, but I think it would be neat to have a more collective culture among us.
So, this is just a long-winded way of encouraging people who, unlike me, might have something real to add here to get the conversation going…
Yes! I fear people thought my questions were rhetorical (or worse, stupid
) — I really would like some advice as I think it can be a great thing but very difficult to facilitate.
Unfortunately, I think certain people are predisposed to be competitive and lets face it, graduate school is competitive. You compete for fellowships, research assistantships, grants, authorship on a publication, to be “chosen” to write with various professors, etc. The worst part about graduate school is the passive agressiveness between graduate students. As a graduate student, I feel lucky to have a pretty tight group of people that I work with, which was NOT organized by my advisor, but rather because we share similar interests academically and outside the department. Even if my advisor tried to start a pseudo-support group with his advisees, it personally wouldn’t work for me. I think the best thing you can do as an advisor is support grad student as an individual and allow them to find a group of students they feel comfortable working with.
Our first-year, first-semester cohort has had four meetings now. At each meeting, our advisor stresses the importance of group effort, socialization, and collaboration. So far I’ve managed to pair myself up with one other person and sadly we joke about being a cohort of two. Students just do not seem to be interested in working with one another. In my estimation, this lack of cohesion PROMOTES individual competition. Though I have been told time and time again NOT to compare myself to others, I can’t help wonder how everyone else is doing! I too, would like others to comment on this topic.
I’m my advisor’s only advisee, so I don’t have *personal* experience, but my husband’s experience is maybe useful.
He is in a field organized into labs, so its also not directly translatable maybe, but from my observations, 3 out of the 4 grad students in the lab work very well together, and have a very collaborative relationship. I think what helps is that the advisor points out *specific* ways in which grad students can work together on projects, for instance when one student comes in with an idea, his advisor will point out specific ways in which that student’s project/ideas could be helped by collaboration with another student in the lab — co-authorship between graduate students is highly encouraged. That working relationship has meant that the students are highly invested in each others’ work, which leads to a more general collaborative environment — students *always* go to each others talks, they talk about academic issues, and get along socially (except for one of the students, but that’s another story altogether).
I did my MA in a different university from where I’m doing my PhD – and with a 5-year gap between the two. I’m still in close touch with a good handful of coursemates from my MA, many of whom are now doing/have done PhDs. I draw great support from them, perhaps more than from colleagues in my current university, for several reasons:
- We’re actually good friends who like each other, otherwise we wouldn’t have lasted this long;
- I’m doing an interdisciplinary PhD programme, whereas they are often still in our original discipline, which helps keep me in touch with it;
- conversely, those on my programme, and even those who have the same advisor, have very divergent interests;
- We get to compare departmental styles, stresses, strengths;
- We’re not in such direct competition – this means we can actually get excited about our ideas and struggles without the sneaking competitiveness.
Similarly, I appreciate being in touch with people I’ve got to know recently who are at other grad schools in this city. So my point is that grad student support needn’t come from people who share the same advisor, or even the same school.
That said, it’s interesting watching how the cohorts work on our interdisciplinary programme. My year was particularly cohesive – thanks, I think, to a combination of several particularly kind and sociable people, and several particularly serious, bright students (one or two were in both categories!). The cohort two years later was a disaster – awful atmosphere in seminars, no mutual support, open competitiveness and ‘I know more than you know’, a lot of misery and insecurity all round. The profs didn’t know what to do at all. It’s not necessarily their responsibility, being as how we’re not in kindergarten anymore, but perhaps some more direct guidance would have helped.