我是如何管理我的导师？

转自：人文社科新方法

编辑：学长

原标题为《如何管理你的导师》，本文是我如何管理导师的秘籍，前面是英文，后面是翻译。

英文版本

The care and maintenance of your adviser

Ever since the advent of graduate school, students have complained about their advisers. It is almost an article of faith. The adviser is never available or is too available; gives too much feedback or not enough; is too critical or isn't providing enough direction; and so on. Exchanging horror stories with other students is a great way to bond. But advising goes both ways — and if, after careful reflection on their own studies and progress, students determine that they are not getting the guidance they require, they must address the deficiencies.

It is not surprising that advisers figure large in graduate students' conversations. In 2009, the US Council of Graduate Schools in Washington DC reported survey results showing that 65% of the 1,856 doctoral students who responded identified mentoring or advising as a main factor in PhD completion. Our own research at Flinders University in Adelaide, Australia, and our experience at graduate-student workshops across the world suggest that the adviser–student relationship has a big impact on completion time. It certainly influences whether students are still smiling at the end of their degrees!

Students often assume that once they call someone an adviser, he or she automatically acquires all the skills of advising. After all, if your adviser is the world leader in stem-cell technology, he or she must excel at the seemingly simple task of advising — not to mention possess highly developed interpersonal skills and a keen interest in graduate-student development. Sadly, that is not the case.

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Sometimes, advising is a weakness of an otherwise very accomplished scientist. This is not surprising. Mentoring tends to be a private business, and often the only model available is an adviser's own experience of having been advised. If it was good, they decide to copy that style and methodology; if it was bad, they do the opposite. There is no guarantee that either approach will provide the student with the guidance he or she needs.

A proactive approach is necessary. If your adviser isn't looking after you in the way you need, then you need to look after them. At some point in the PhD journey, most graduate students come to an important realization: “This is my thesis. My name is written on the front of it. I need to become the driver.” The sooner the candidate does this, the better. If you're not getting feedback, clear direction or the necessary resources, then you must do something about it. What does this mean in practice? Let us take some examples.

Meetings

A comment we often hear at our workshops is, “My adviser is lovely but he/she is just so busy that we never get to talk about my thesis”. And our response is, “Yes, your adviser is busy. All advisers are busy and will continue to be busy. Regardless, you need to organize meetings where you can get real face time and talk about your thesis.” We're not recommending a quick chat in the coffee room or a brief word in the lab. Nor do we mean a lab meeting.

We mean regularly scheduled meetings focusing on your thesis. You will probably have to schedule them and follow up to make sure that they happen. And when a meeting is cancelled, you will have to reschedule it and persist until it happens.

In our experience, just scheduling the meeting isn't enough. You can't assume that your adviser hosts productive meetings or can intuit what you need to know. You need a specific, uncomplicated agenda that could include such action items as what you've done in the past two weeks; feedback on written work; what you'll do in the next two weeks; the next meeting.

This all sounds very straightforward. But if more students followed these steps, many adviser–student issues could be resolved.

Feedback

Again, in an ideal world, your adviser would be skilled at providing supportive comments, delicate in pointing out areas for improvement and deft at intuitively knowing the level of feedback you seek. But this is a fantasy. One student described her feedback experience as similar to being a victim in a drive-by shooting — she handed over her work, it was riddled with bullets and she was left with a bloodied mess as the shooter drove off.

To be fair, e-mailing a chapter to an adviser and saying “Give me feedback” is like walking into a restaurant and saying “Give me food.” You need to be a bit more specific. When handing over your work, identify the type of feedback you are looking for. You might say, “This is an early draft, so I just want feedback on the overall direction,” or “Please focus on the discussion on page six.” If the feedback you get isn't helpful, ask for more detail. Maintaining your adviser means asking for what you need rather than hoping that he or she will know what to provide.

Managing up

One of the secrets of looking after your adviser is working out what they want — and what most advisers want is a student who comes to them with suggestions and solutions as well as problems, gets things done and makes the job of advising easier. In business this is called 'managing up'. When we work with graduate students we call it the 'care and maintenance' of your adviser.

So although it is natural to complain about your adviser — and can even be cathartic — it is not enough. If your adviser is not giving you what you need, you need to go out and get it.

译者按：

这是一篇发表于Nature的专栏文章，探讨了学生应该如何处理与导师之间的关系。原文非常通俗易懂，建议直接阅读原文。

原题：The care and maintenance of your adviser

本文作者Hugh Kearns 与 Maria Gardiner 认为：在攻读学位的道路上，为了尽可能获得导师更好的指导，学生应该负起的责任并不比导师小。

正文

一旦开始研究生生涯，学生们便开始吐槽他们的导师，这几乎已经成为了一种信条。他们的导师不是太忙就是太闲，不是太严厉就是太放养。与同学一起吐槽与老板相处的可怕经历，成为了一种人际关系润滑剂。实际上，指导 (advising) 是一种双向关系，为了自己的学业与研究进度着想，学生完全有责任去解决指导不足的问题。

关于导师的话题总是在学生的交流中占了很大比例，这并不令人感到惊奇。2009年美国华盛顿研究生院委员会的调查显示，在1856个接受调查的博士生中，65%的学生认为导师在他们获取博士学位的过程中占了主要因素。

我们在澳大利亚阿德莱德弗林德斯大学的研究，以及我们从世界各地开办的研究生工作坊中所得到反馈，也证实了导师与学生之间的关系对毕业年限有着重要影响。这种关系影响到了学生在攻读学位的路上能否笑到最后！

学生们总是有一种幻想：那些他们称之为“导师”的人会自动获得与指导有关的所有技能。你想想看，如果你的老板是干细胞研究领域的权威专家，那么在指导学生这么简单的事情上，他肯定更加在行呀，更不用说与学生的交流技巧了！很可惜，事实并不是这样。

有时候，指导技巧恰恰是一个杰出科学家的弱项。这没什么可奇怪的。指导学生这件事本身就是一件比较私人的事儿，而导师能够学习指导经验的榜样往往只有一个，那就是他们自己的导师。

如果他们在与自己的老板交流时觉得还不错，那么他们就会复制这种模式去指导自己的学生；如果感觉很糟糕，那么就按相反的方向去做。我们没法保证他们自己的学生就能够适应这两种取向中的任何一种。

在与导师的交流过程中，我们应该更加积极一些。如果你的导师没有按着你期望的方式来指导你，那么你需要去“指导”他们。

在读博期间，很多学生开始认识到这么个现实：“这是我的博士论文！我的名字将会写在扉页！我应该是掌舵者！”越快认清这个现实越好！ 如果你在与导师的交流过程中，并没有获得有效的反馈、清晰的方向以及必要的资源，起来！做点什么！那么，该做点什么呢？我们通过几个方面来举例说明：

一、谈话

我们在工作坊中经常会听到这样的抱怨：”我的老板挺好的，就是太忙了，我完全找不到机会和他好好谈谈我的论文。“我们的回答通常是：”是的，你的老板很忙，所有的老板都很忙，而且会一直忙下去。但你还是要去想办法凑老板的时间来面对面地讨论你的论文。“我们并不是建议只在茶水间简单地交谈一下，或者在实验室说点只言片语，当然，我们也不是说要开一个正式的实验室会议。

我们所指的是针对你的论文的常规讨论时间。你需要为导师安排时间并保证计划顺利进行，如果一个时间段不行，那么就换一个时间段，总有他空下来的时候。根据我们的经验，仅仅安排会议是不够的。你不能指望导师能够主导整个谈话过程或者凭直觉就能发现你的需求。你需要制订会谈纪要，里面要包含你在过去两周所做的工作、在写作方面的进展、之后两周的工作计划以及下一次见面的时间与讨论内容。

这看起来似乎很简单，但如果更多的学生坚持这么做，那么大部分师生关系就能够得到有效提升了。

二、反馈

在理想世界中，你的导师能够提供有效的评论，指出需要改进的地方，并能够给出你所需要的反馈。但这只是一种理想，现实情况是，学生们常常形容与导师的见面就像飞车枪战现场——他们向导师汇报他们的工作，然后他们的工作被批得体无完肤，然后他们遍体鳞伤地离开导师办公室。

说句公道话，把论文的一个章节发给老板，然后说“请给我反馈”，就好像你走到一个餐馆然后说“请给我食物”一样。你需要明确你的需求。下次给老板汇报工作的时候，要明确你需要得到哪方面的反馈，比如“这是论文的草稿，所以我希望你在大方向上指导一下”，或者“请先重点批阅第六页讨论部分”。如果导师的反馈你并不满意，那就再多问一些细节。维护与导师的关系意味着你要主动提出你的要求，而不是期待导师会主动发现你的需求。

三、向上管理

维护与导师关系的另一个秘诀是想导师所想。大部分导师希望学生在提出问题的时候，也能提出相应的备选解决方案，这样子他们进行指导的时候就方便很多了。这在管理学上被称为“向上管理 (managing up)”。当我们与学生交流时，通常把这种工作方式称为“管理你的导师” ("care and maintenance" your adviser)。

总而言之，吐槽导师是一件很正常的事情，甚至是一个很好的发泄渠道，但这是远远不够的。如果你的导师不能给你什么，那么你就要自己动手去拿。

本文作者Hugh Kearns 与 Maria Gardiner 在澳大利亚阿德莱德弗林德斯大学从事研究与教学工作。他们还举办了一系列涉及学生与导师关系处理的工作坊。详情请见他们的网站：http://ithinkwell.com.au/

注：本文转自人文社科新方法，胡志善译，仅做学术分享之用，若涉及侵权等行为，请先与微信号xuezhang600联系删除，万分感谢！

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