Dark Matter

I love the Science Times. If it weren't for the newsprint that gets all over my fingers and adds to the general feeling of disgustingness I have when I arrive at work I would pick it up every Tuesday on my way to the subway.

Instead I try to read it online, and today I'm glad that I did. This article discussing what happens when grad students go crazy and kill their professors highlights the uncomfortable experience of being beholden to your advisor and having your success, and at times entire happiness, wrapped up in his or her approval.

And advisers aren't always the most humble or encouraging of individuals. One faculty member I knew in grad school would force his students to prepare posters for national meetings and departmental retreats on nights and weekends and then would randomly pull their presentations from the agenda with little or no explanation.

The sad part? He was a really nice guy to the grad students who weren't in his lab; we had no idea what a jerk he was until one of our classmates joined his lab.

The really sad part? He was given tenure and continues to oppress and mistreat his lab members to this day.

If the tenure system rewards people like that, why would someone who's decent and treats his or her students well ever want to be a faculty member? Search me! But luckily I worked with one.

My advisor was a relatively new faculty member when I joined her lab in the last millennium. She got to know her lab members, invited us to her house for parties and took us out for lunches to celebrate successful paper and grant submissions.

But she's definitely in the minority, though for the life of me I can't understand why. Much as I was troubled by the reports of violence against PhD advisers in the Times article today, after viewing life in other labs at my graduate school and others, I think the tenure system provides no incentive to treat graduate students any better.