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add in meetings
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James Brusey
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Sep 28, 2022
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#+title: How to meet with your supervisor | ||
#+options: toc:nil | ||
#+latex_class: scrartcl | ||
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The key things you need to know: | ||
1. Meetings are important for your success | ||
2. Joint meetings (with other students) make learning more fun | ||
3. Help with scheduling | ||
4. Some preparation is needed | ||
5. Take notes---there should be at least one action | ||
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* Meetings aid success | ||
Postgraduate research study is unlike undergraduate study. | ||
For the undergraduate, the lecturer seems to sit in judgement of the student, ready to downgrade their estimation whenever a `dumb' question is asked. | ||
In postgraduate study, however, the supervisor is an active member of the team, sometimes contributes to the writing or software development, and generally acts more like a coach. | ||
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The only mistake you can make is to not come to (or arrange) regular meetings. | ||
Assume your supervisor is lazy---they won't necessarily arrange meetings if you don't ask for them. | ||
Make sure you get the meetings you deserve! | ||
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* Joint meetings | ||
The prime reason for having joint meetings is to reduce the overall meeting time dedicated to supervision for the supervisor. | ||
With large numbers of PhD and Master's level students, supervision meetings can quickly become the dominant preoccupation of a busy supervisor. | ||
Therefore, holding joint meetings (2--5 students at a time) is an effective way to reduce this load. | ||
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While this approach may seem to shortchange the student, it can actually be beneficial to all. | ||
First, questions brought up by other students may be interesting to you (e.g., how do you get numbered headings in RMarkdown?). | ||
Second, when you are behind, you may be inspired to work harder when you see other students doing well. | ||
Finally, if you are ahead, you can enhance your learning experience by helping others who are struggling. | ||
In summary, joint meetings usually benefit everyone. | ||
In the rare case where this is not working for you, make sure you let your supervisor know. | ||
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** Help with scheduling | ||
One difficulty with joint meetings is that it can make scheduling more complicated. | ||
Thus it will be really helpful if students can coordinate between themselves to work out a good time. | ||
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Note that there are no strict rules on how often you can meet with your supervisor (there may be some limits on how /infrequently/ you meet of course!). | ||
However, it is best not to leave it too long without a meeting and I recommend scheduling a meeting at least every 2 weeks. | ||
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* Preparation | ||
At the very minimum, you should come to the meeting with your current draft. | ||
Even if you have not written a line of code or performed a single experiment, you should be able to show that you can produce a PDF of your draft dissertation from week 1. | ||
At the very least, this should have some headings that show roughly what you plan to include. | ||
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Once you have results, then make sure you can /show/ those results. | ||
If you need to bring along your laptop to display your draft, that's fine. | ||
Another option is to put your results onto the university's [[https://github.coventry.ac.uk][github]]. | ||
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* Take some notes | ||
Sometimes going to a supervision can be like trying to drink from a fire hose. | ||
Make sure that you come with a note book, take notes of any /actions/ and remember to look at those notes after the meeting. | ||
If you are not familiar with the idea of keeping track of a to-do list, you might find it useful to put tasks on your mobile phone (e.g., Apple Reminders or Google Keep). | ||
Try to avoid the situation where you go to the next meeting with tasks not done. | ||
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* Summary | ||
Meeting your supervisor can sometimes seem scary and intimidating but it needn't be so. | ||
Your supervisor is there to help you produce a great project. | ||
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