A few thoughts for the weekend:
First, the NAS committee for science education has published a new
guide, called (more or less) "On being a MEntor". There are
some useful pieces of information and guidance about how
to be a mentor and responsibilities thereof. It's on line at
http://www.nap.edu/readingroom/books/mentor .
Second, about the PhD. I was talking to one of my students
last night and she stated rather better than I could that
doing her PhD was not just about training (in fact, IMHO
training is only a small part of it), but about the process and
the personal challenge. I agree with her. The PhD is
intrinsically valuable both personally--we take it for granted
when we have it, but it IS a real accomplishment--and
societally--we do valuable work while we are earning
it. Regardless of what happens at the end of the degree,
the process does matter.
The problem is, the PhD is often viewed as a "training
course" for academics. It isn't. It doesn't get you a
union card into academics, and be aware that it never has.
It's an education in doing science, and in intellectual rigor.
And students have a responsibility to make sure that it works,
rather than be passive consumers.
Finally, we all need to vent and complain at times. But
we do need to guard against rendering ourselves helpless
just because things aren't the way we want them to be.
The system stinks in many ways, it's not fair, and it isn't
based on merit (although it pretends to be). "They" have
lied to us and still do. We can blame "them", but
it won't make a difference. ultimately, we are
responsible for getting in there and changing things--or
at least, in developing survival strategies. We can't just
wait passively, because there is no cavalry
to ride to our rescue.
--
-susan
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DON'T REPLY to the email address in header.
It's an anti-spam. Use the one below.
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S L Forsburg, PhD forsburg at salk.edu
Molecular Biology and Virology Lab
The Salk Institute, La Jolla CA
http://flosun.salk.edu/~forsburg/lab.html
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"These are my opinions. I don't have
time to speak for anyone else."
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