<p>What does your PhD advisor typically do or say to motivate you to work harder, longer hours, on weekends etc.?</p>
<p>Because, of course, professors depend on their students and postdocs career-wise. So they develop various management and motivation styles. Some flat-out demand (“my way or the highway” type of people), others try to inspire or act like father figures. Some make you punch in and punch out, others don’t. Some stress teamwork, others set up internal competitions. And so on. What’s your prof’s style?</p>
<p>My former advisor of 5 years (Dr. M. Reza Ghadiri, The Scripps Research Institute, California, chemistry/biochemistry) called himself “a cheerleader”. I’m writing a memoir-ish post about his motivational methods.</p>
<p>My PI makes a blanket policy of offering a cash bonus to grad students who successfully earn fellowships. My PI generally relies on his recruiting skills to get only self motivated individuals in his lab as he would be a perfectly awful cheerleader to us once we are here. We have weekly to monthly meetings with him and being able to present a compelling amount of work is where my motivation comes from. If I didn’t present a significant number of experiments, I doubt he would care or even notice, but I would feel like I wasn’t very productive.</p>
<p>Mine doesn’t do anything. We don’t have regular group meetings, he doesn’t drop in the lab often, and he pretty much lets you do whatever work you want.</p>
<p>What he does do is always leave his office door open and is almost always willing to discuss at length the project you’re working on (though this hasn’t been as true recently since he started trying to get a startup company going).</p>
<p>I have definitely never heard of this. Then again, my fellowship pays 50% more than my GRA stipend did and I don’t pay any fees.</p>
<p>By the way, how does my advisor motivate me? He doesn’t, really. It’s up to me to be self-motivated and have a clear end goal. He’s great about being around to give advice when I need it, however.</p>
<p>He pays something like an extra 5K per year and yes, this is good motivation to apply to lots of fellowships for me and other grad students in the lab. Why would the university give a crap what my PI does with his grant money so long as it is persuant to the terms of the grant.</p>
<p>I know lots of professors that give a bonus to students that come in with outside money. Essentially they’re a free student, especially if you’re in a lab that’s mostly theoretical work, so why not give you some sort of bonus to encourage the professor to be able to hire an extra student (or fund extra things in the lab).</p>
<p>I’m honestly surprised that bonuses aren’t larger. If a professor is willing to pay $30k for a graduate student, and then that graduate student wins a $30k fellowship, why should the professor take the entire $30k surplus and pay the student $0?</p>
<p>I’d much prefer new equipment than a pay raise because new equipment will probably let you graduate faster. Then again, the cost of living in Atlanta is very low compared to California.</p>
<p>My public health PhD advisor doesn’t really have to motivate me to work hard…I motivate myself. He give guidance and help when necessary. He’s not demanding, more teamwork-oriented, and does not encourage competition but rather collaboration amongst his students. His other doctoral student is a close friend of mine. He shows a genuine interest in my progress, and I guess that’s sort of a motivator, maybe.</p>
<p>My psych PhD advisor is more like a father figure (my public health advisor is younger than some of my cousins, so he doesn’t feel very much like a father, lol). He’s not demanding either, but is very generous with his time and energy - he’s always willing to meet with me about a paper or project and actually knows my degree requirements pretty well (other advisor is like 100% concerned about the research, which is awesome, but I DO have to graduate).</p>
<p>As for the bonus, that’s pretty common. Students here get a bonus on top of their regular fellowship if they get an outside one, up to about $30,000. I just got an NSF so I’m not going to get topped up ($30,000 is the max) but if I had gotten a lower-paying fellowship they would’ve topped me up to $30,000. I live in New York, though, in which $30,000 is still pretty meager. I kind of wish I did live in Atlanta with this much money - for what I’m paying for my half of a 2-bedroom I could get a much nicer 2-bedroom all by myself downtown, lol.</p>