I like being surrounded by non-grad-students. Looking back at being in Grad School City, I was a depressed student surrounded by other depressed students; we fed on each others' depression, and it was hard, if not impossible, to get out of this cycle. I like having my cheerful self back!
I like being surrounded by people that live under the assumption that they will have to work with each other for a long time. It makes people develop good working relationships, and being part of the team is more important than feeding one's ego = major win for everyone involved.
It is good to have good managers. It's a big jump to take from grad student or postdoc to a professor managing a lab; as a result, there are many professors that lack managerial skills. At my current institution, moving up to be a project manager is a gradual process that takes several years of working for other project managers while increasing one's responsibility; this more gradual 'moving up the ladder' process gives people more time to develop their managerial skills, making them better managers. And a good manager can do wonders in helping their subordinates develop!
Other topics I am considering for these series:
- Working with one's advisor from a distance;
- Managing a committee that spawns several institutions;
- Acceptance of a work-life balance;
- Insert your question(s) here.
4 comments:
I agree that working at an institution like yours (and mine) is great. It probably really helps too that although we are still overworked, we are not underpaid like grad students!
You are so right about most PIs having poor management skills. It such a huge problem, I'm surprised graduate schools don't add some sort of management class to the curriculum. I know, no one wants to take an extra class, but this might actually be helpful.
How do collaborations work, at your home-away-from-home? Do you work on joint projects with both universities, or only partner with students in your physical location? Or is most of your work individual?
Rebecca - not being tight on money must help tremendously; I am still waiting to see what that feels like!
MXX - I would have been glad to take such a class; one can get far by observing the skills of others, but not everyone comes across really good examples to follow.
MO - I am in the thesis-writing stage of my grad school career, so most of my work is individual. However, I do work fairly closely with one post-doc and one full time scientist at my physical location, in addition to being overseen by a PI here and a PI at the institution who will be granting my PhD. I don't currently collaborate with any students back at my university, but this is partly because the ones I used to work with have either recently graduated or are hunkering down to do so.
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