I mentioned previously that my colleague Ben Powell went to a helpful workshop on supervising Ph.D students. Stimulated by this he sent an email to all his students and postdocs with the following requirements for future meetings.
It should contain:
- Your report on what you have done in since our last meeting
- An agenda for the meeting. This MUST include the following items
(but may include more)
- discussion of what you have done
- discussion of what you will do next
- one tangible observable that everyone at the meeting agrees you are going to do next
- Any upcoming deadlines (even if they are far away)
- Something you have (formally) written since the last meeting (perhaps a summary of a paper you read, a draft of a thesis chapter or paper, details of your latest calculations)
2) At the meeting we should take time for each of items on the agenda.
3) Within 6 hours of the end of the meeting you should send me another email. It should contain:
- A summary of the meeting
- What you tangible observable for the next week is
- A to do list (this should be copied, pasted and edited from your previous after-meeting report so that things don't get dropped off the list). At least near the top of the list, it should be in priority order.
Somewhat related issues concerning student-supervisor expectations are discussed in an old post I wrote.
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