Transcript Document

How To Communicate
With Your Advisor Well
2008.3.28.
Sue Moon
Associate Professor
Computer Science Department
Why Did You Pick Your Advisor?
Research Topic
 Personality
 $$$
 Fringe Benefits

What Have You Come For?
Research Topic
 Personality
 $$$
 Fringe Benefits
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Your Dilemma
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Though research topic is the only thing you care for,
the rest are all still important
=>You need to “balance and manage your
expectations”
Assumptions You Should Not Make (I)
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Your advisor remembers or knows:
 What undergrad courses you have taken and not
 How fast and well you can read a paper
 How good a programmer you are
=> Bottomline: S/he doesn’t know your background
as much as you wish
Assumptions You Should Not Make (II)

Your advisor remembers or knows:
 What project you are in charge of (unbelievable, but a
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reality!)
What program you have written today
What paper you have read this week
What equations you have solved this month
=> Bottomline: S/he cannot keep track of what you
are doing as much as you wish
Assumptions You Should Absolutely Not Make

That your advisor read all the papers you have read
and understand your problem perfectly and knows
the answer
 Then it’s a solved problem.
Why are you working on it?
Your Advisor Is Your 1st Audience

Who is
 reasonably smart
 well-read in your area of research interests
 extremely interested in your research ideas
 committed to exciting brainstorming sessions
 able to drag you out of a research path that is passé
 happy to be the first, second, … n-th reader of your work
before publication
and
 capable of providing you with resources you need
Your Advisor’s Physical Limits
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You are 1 of N students
Your project is 1 of M projects
Your paper is 1 of S papers
S/He teaches 1 to 2 courses a semester
S/He attends 1 to X committee meetings a week
S/He travels 1 to Y times a semester
S/He reads ZZZ papers to catch up with N students
working on M projects and to turn around X
committee meetings to meaningful changes
Still Your Advisor Is Likely To Remember
Big picture of your research interest
 Probably not the details of what you explained last
time you met
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Recommendations
 At the beginning of a meeting, very briefly explain what

you have done up till last week (big picture) and then the
weekly delta (details)
It is good practice to summarize your own work and also
remind yourself of the original motivation
Every Time You Meet Your Advisor

Do your best
 To break away from the assumptions and remind your
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
advisor of your past achievements
To communicate that you’re making a steady progress,
not one big bang some day; your advisor knows well
enough not to expect that Rome could be built overnight
And your advisor will expect
 Steady progress slowly picking up speed
 Your happiness in that you got what you came for
Speak, Write, and Hack
Pick Two!
- Stefan Savage
Good Luck!