Overview of jessiestam on PostgraduateForum.com

Overview of jessiestam

Signup date: 04 Dec 2015 at 7:43am

Last login: 12 Dec 2015 at 11:05pm

Post count: 4

Recent Posts

Am getting very very frustrated with my supervisor

jessiestam 4 posts
9 years ago

Quote From enzyme:
Hello,

I think you are not appreciating the positive side of all this: it’s much more fun working with a supervisor who is totally hands-off because he leaves you completely free to explore what you want and to think your own hypotheses! Figuring out problems on your own is part of the game, you can see it as the price to pay for freedom/fun! I personally find reading papers very useful to keep my mind opened.

Concerning the high profile journal, could you maybe chat with someone experienced in your lab as someone already suggested? I personally use a post doc in my lab as a sort of “potential reviewer” just to double-check that the experimental design of the future experiments that I have thought is the strongest possible so in this way you can aim to a very good journal.

Good luck!!

E.

Sometimes, it is easier said than done. While a student is free to plan experiment, figure out the problem and form your own hypothesis, it could be very dangerous! I say that because a PhD student is not a PostDoc who has undergone 4-6 years of drilling and learning; we are fairly inexperienced in all sort of things (ie we are here to learn !) I have seen few students in my lab who, due to the total hands-free approach by our boss, wasted years of "planning and forming" their hypotheses and research evaluation. When the time is up for them to submit their PhD theses, the lucky ones will graduate with 0 paper under their belt, while the unlucky one, failed their PhD.

co-First author: is the order list important ?

jessiestam 4 posts
9 years ago

Have been discussing this with a few friends of mine. Is the order of co-first authors important in a manuscript? I was told that, if the list of author order is AAA*, BBB*, CCC,DDD,EEE, with * denotes equal contribution, regardless of co-authorship or not, AAA is still the Main leader of this project? My question is, if that is the case, what is the point of having a co-first annotation ?

Am getting very very frustrated with my supervisor

jessiestam 4 posts
9 years ago

Quote From TreeofLife:
Some universities have a set of academics who offer paper writing or guidance services, have you got any of those? Do you have a second supervisor? Could you go to your annual assessors/guidance committee for advice?

I do not have second supervisor...All my annual assessors know about it, but what can they do at most? My main supervisor is a big shot lady in the university, everyone knows how busy she is..

Quote From Tudor_Queen:
Some ideas...
Can you present her with concrete problems you are having and ask for concrete support (you identify what support)? Or concrete reasons as to why it is "impossible" and what you suggest instead (a mid tier journal). I suggest that you pretend to have respect/confidence in her... otherwise she may sense it and be even more unhelpful...

when I ask for support, she will push the problem back to me and say "it is your project, not mine". I explained to her why it is impossible to get into high IF, she got very cranky and accused me of not trying the very best for her lab, which upsets me ALOT

Am getting very very frustrated with my supervisor

jessiestam 4 posts
9 years ago

Hi All, long time lurker, first time posting in this forum. I am mid way into my PhD in life science at the moment. I have a very very busy supervisor who is completely hands-off on my project. Whenever I have certain issue with my experiment, she will say "That's your project, you have to figure it out" or "I don't know what should you do".... Because of this issue, I have completely lost passion in research and have no respect towards my supervisor. Long story short, I have lost the confidence in her as a supervisor. I am not the only student who is suffering under her mentorship, as a matter of fact, EVERY students in my lab faces the similar situation as me.

I consider myself to be the most productive student in this lab. In fact, I had my first author paper in my 1st year. To my dismal, my supervisor wasn't even encouraging during that period (as the paper was published in low impact journal and not up to her expectation). Right now I am working towards another paper which I am hoping to get into a mid tier journal.. Then, things get complicated. My supervisor wants to submit to a High IF journal which everyone thinks that is IMPOSSIBLE. I don't mind if she is a helpful lot who can give advise and guidance on what should I do in order for us to get into Nature quality journal, the problem I am having right now is, I am left stranded alone. What should I do?