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Strangeattractor comments on Open Thread, May 4 - May 10, 2015 - Less Wrong Discussion
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Repost due to lack of reply: I’m a fourth year PhD student in the life sciences, and I need mentorship, preferably from a Slytherin, or at least someone with a Slytherin hat. My advisor doesn’t want me doing “mercenary collaborations”, or quick experiments with researchers outside my field in exchange for secondary authorships. He says I need to focus on my thesis research in the next year so as to publish and graduate. Are there any academics in the LW readership who have the insight to tell me whether this is good advice or whether he just wants me pumping out papers with his name on them so he can get tenure?
Are you sure you have the right advisor? If you are so concerned that his interests may be that divergent from your own, it might be better to switch advisors than to continue with this one. Ideally, you want an advisor who already has tenure and looks at you like a son or daughter, and will advocate for you as your career progresses. If that's not the vibe you are getting from your advisor, then look around and see if there's someone whose personality and style of work better suits you. There will be costs to switching advisors, but they may not be as big as the costs of continuing with a mismatch between advisor and student for more than a year.