In our discussions about criticism it struck me that one of my concerns
is how to give adequate and useful criticism, but make clear that work
is inadequate if it is.
The fact is, sometimes, a student or colleague does work that is
unsatisfactory. Since I am a post-doc (which means that I don't really
supervise people, and mostly do my work myself) my solution, so far, to
this problem, is to re-do the work myself. This has a three-fold
negative effects: first, it means that the person producing the
unsatisfactory work doesn't improve, second, it means extra work for
me, third it means that only I control the final product.
I'm like to propose a couple of scenarios and get feedback on how one
should tell someone their work is unsatisfactory, and then how you try
to help them produce more satisfactory work. And, finally how to deal
with work that remains unsatisfactory after you've tried to help improve
it (because this will undoubtedly happen sometimes).
A) A student of yours is writing a report/summary of work that will be
turned into a committee (i.e. qualifying exam, etc.), and gives you
something that you consider unreadable. You don't believe that it can be
turned into the committee as is. Also, it would be unacceptable for you
to re-write it yourself. On the other hand, you cannot give a writing
course to the student. (Let's assume here that the student is a native
english speaker, so we're not addressing the special circumstances of
foreign students who do not yet speak english well). What do you do?
B) Data analysis needs to be done that requires mathematical and
programming skills. Up until that point, the experiment required
different skills, for example, running experiments that had already been
pre-designed. Originally, the data analysis was going to follow
previously designed lines as well, but as the project progresses, you
realize that high level mathematical analysis will be required, as well
as the ability to implement those analyses in computer programs. You
discover that your student simply doesn't have the mathematical
background to do the analysis (for example, he's never studied matrix
algebra or partial differential equations). What do you do?
Incidentally, if anyone who knows me or my work is reading, these
scenarios, though they may resemble reality, do NOT come from real life.
They are just examples that I've tried to come up with off the top of my
head.
Bharathi
