I’m a statistics doctoral student, as you can tell by the username, but often I feel that I don’t belong in this field because all of the statistics professors I know and have met always seem to be a bit, well, curt and short in their dealings with people. They are all successful, in that they are tenured professors, so I’m starting to doubt that I belong in this group because I just can’t bring myself to “be like” them. Here’s an example:
I’ve been preparing a presentation for an upcoming conference that my advisor (I’m a doctoral student) and I are authors on. I spent a good amount of time on it, and objectively, it does look professionally done (I used LaTeX with the Beamer class). I sent him a draft, not thinking that it was perfect. I got this reply:
Now, were I in his shoes, I would have written this:
By the way, my advisor is an American and a native English speaker, so language and culture are not excuses. No stats person, besides me, would give a response like mine to a student, I think. Hell, they might even write less: “Too long.” Why is this? What’s wrong with encouraging people by praising incremental progress? I praise my students when they do things right, so am I somehow failing them?
Are you sure this is a math person thing? You’ve posted emails that your advisor has sent you before, asking us if he seems overly critical, when most of his emails seem pretty innocuous to most people. Do you think maybe you have a tendency to see emails as more critical than they actually are?
The actual email does not sound very bad to me at all. Perhaps he didn’t think you were as close to being done as you do. Too much text in slides is a basic problem, and can really kill a talk. Your proposed response didn’t mention the lack of a conclusion. Often one doesn’t want to pile on the changes in one pass - your response made it sound like once you fixed these problems you’d be done, which might not be true.
In the engineering conference I’m involve in, members of the Program Committee review all slides before they go into the repository for presentation. Before PowerPoint, when we used real slides, bad slides were the number one complaint the audience had about the talks. After the template and after we had the ability to fix bad slides ourselves there have been very few complaints.
The best feedback I got from my advisor was not delivered with kid gloves, and it stayed with me because of that. it is not just math - any good research facility is going to have some big egos, some of whom are going to give you a lot harsher feedback than you got here. No personal attacks, only attacks on ideas, just like the SDMB.
This isn’t a characteristic of “math people”. Your advisor just sounds rigorous and demanding and perhaps doesn’t mince words. Just like mine. His mind is on your content and not on your feelings. If that was the extent of his criticism, your presentation was probably rather good.
That looks like every email I got from my advisor in grad school. While it would be nice if they took the time to add in some encouragement to soften the blow of the critique, it’s far more important that they are unambiguous than that they are nice.
I’m guessing your talk needs a lot more work to be remotely near good, which is why you didn’t get much in the way of praise. Making a good talk is hard, and is usually only learned through long experience (and sometimes not at all).
Also, don’t use LaTeX unless you absolutely have to. Use Powerpoint. It’s way faster, and looks way better.
You’re a Ph.D student and you expect your professors to praise you for simply doing work, regardless of how good it is?
Maybe he doesn’t think the presentation is coming along nicely and that you did a nice job. Maybe he thinks it is an unclear, lengthy mess of unecessary text and equations without a conclusion.
Presumably, you will fix the problems he has with it and he will be satisfied - but even at that point, praise is for praise-worthy work. If you eventually do a competent job on the presentation, why should he praise you for simply not fucking it up?
If you praise your students for doing average work, you are failing them. You should praise them when they do exceptional work, not for simply “doing things right”. They’re students, they’re supposed to learn to do things right. Saying “Correct!” is all the praise that’s required for not botching a problem.
Think about how much more meaningful it will be when your professor does say “Nice job!” about something you’ve done.
You are using the “sandwich technique” typically recommended for giving feedback. This is well-known in business and is generally good practice. I wouldn’t suggest you change how you write your emails, except I warn you that the last sentence could be twisted into premature agreement by someone so inclined. Like, they cut some text and make one or two things more concise and assume you’re good with that. But keeping up the sandwich technique in general will serve you well, IMHO.
I think the fact that he is not bothering to give you a sandwich of praise is a sign of respect. He’s not being snarky. He thinks you can take the facts of what needs to be changed, and make it happen.
Are you either a) someone who worked in business before going to grad school or b) one of those Millennials who got accustomed to praise for average performance? Either way you could be a little out of tune with how a lot of academics don’t pay as much attention to relationships as they do to facts.
Also, it is often a good idea to get something as close to perfect as you personally can before giving it to the next level for review. Yes, this is a balancing act so you don’t go too far down the wrong path, but try to set the path using conversations and outlines, and don’t let these critical types shred un-proofed copy. It won’t make either of you happy.
I’m impressed. I’ve never seen a 13 year old girl in a doctoral program… and in math as well; your parents must be very proud.
Obsessively over-analyzing communications.
Gossiping to people about said communications.
Constant need for validation.
Loquaciousness.
Emphasis on the visual instead of the factual content.
And you’re also doing some serious self aggrandizing by pointing out how much more caring you are… than every single one of your peer group.
The bitchy attitude in “am I somehow failing them” could only be improved if you toss your hair while saying it.
… what I’m saying is. The problem is most likely yours… and that in turn rests squarely on your parents. Upper middle class? White? Stay at home mom… perhaps? German car? Yay for the 80’s sensitive man archetype… and the moms who raised their kids to be that!
statsman1982, if you want to pull up a couch while I psychoanalyse you for a bit…
In the past 4 months, you’ve started at least three different threads about three different e-mails you’ve received and how they’re worded. Your entire world has been thrown for a loop because they didn’t say enough or they said too much or they said the wrong thing and how should you deal with it?
Meanwhile, you’ve started at least that many threads on how you’re nearly paralysed by anxiety, too concerned over what people think, and too afraid to do your work.
I realize you’re getting help and you’re on medications for this, but I think you need to step back from this problem and consider that it’s not your professor who’s being curt, nor is this a problem with “math people.” This is your issue and your interpretation of reality.
You seem to be worked up about what everyone else thinks that the most innocuous e-mail sends you into a panic and seems to shut you down completely. And make no mistake: this e-mail was innocuous. It wasn’t rude. Your professor took the time to give you three concrete suggestions on how to improve your presentation.
My suggestion: stop worrying about the form of the message and start looking at the content. Which, I guess, is somewhat what your professor was trying to tell you about your presentation.
Yeah, for writing papers, nothing even comes close. It’s just not a presentation tool, though – I’ve had friends who only made talks in LaTeX, and ended up spending ridiculous amounts of time trying to do even minor formatting tweaks that would be trivial in Powerpoint. And even then, their slides looked like crap.
That I believe. I think part of my affection for LaTex is that it represents a demarcation between my years of working for the megacorp and my Shiny New Academic Life. I still do use PP for presentations: perhaps the upside is that I tend to use fewer equations, which is usually a good thing.
Nope, never worked in a business. I did work in radio for 6 years while getting my undergrad, but I was never formally in charge of anyone so that I had to learn the sandwich technique (although those I trained seemed to appreciate it. Oh well). It’s the latter; I’m 27, therefore a millennial.
And, according to someone, a thirteen-year-old girl. That’s an insult–to thirteen-year-olds everywhere.
Well, if we’re going to play the game of “You think you got it bad, let me tell ya,” then I’m going to lose against almost everyone. You win, RandMcnally. You have had the hardest life discussed so far.
The reason I never joined the military is actually stated in your example. I’ve never been the type to take comments like “You’re completely useless” and say, “I’m going to prove you wrong.” Rather, I tend to agree with them.