is some unfairness okay? and how do you decide how to spread opportunities?

When I started my job as a professor, I vowed that I would treat everyone in my lab fairly. (You can probably guess where I got this conviction).

I'm going to spare you the details and jump right to the end of this story: That didn't work very well. In fact, it was really, really stressful for me.

I have a limited amount of resources to spread around, and I've discovered a lot of barriers to the Treat Everyone The Same Plan:

1. Everyone needs something different in terms of mentoring. My lab represents a very diverse skill set. Some of my students entered their PhDs with very little experience with scientific writing. Others had publications under the belts. Some of them are a natural in the lab and others need a lot of hand holding and observation before I can set them loose to collect data reliably. Some like to be very independent, checking in only once or twice in any given semester, and some need regular meeting times to keep on track. I think it is more appropriate for me to meet my students where they are at, and mentor them as individuals, than it is for me to apply the exact same strategies to each of them.

2. Everyone has different career goals. A PhD in my area is incredibly flexible. The entire array of career goals are currently represented in my lab. (Although I am beginning to recruit students with a more specific path in mind). Because they have different career goals, they need me to help open different doors for them - some of them need to connect with community partners. Some need to publish a lot. Some need very specific applied training experiences. I can't give all of these to everyone. In part because....

...3. I have a limited amount of funding. And I need to spend it wisely. On things that will have a good return for me. I can't spend money sending Student A and Student B to Opportunity C when only Student B actually needs it. (And yes, students are required to pursue their own funding and their own training opportunities).

4. I have very clear and specific tenure needs. This is really where the rubber hits the road in terms of being "unfair" in my lab. I am fortunate - I have very clear expectations for tenure. Other professors do not. Some of my students help me progress on the path toward those goals and some don't. I am not willing to spend my resources (time, funding, money for training, etc) on things that can't help me accomplish those goals. This is ultimately how I decide to spread resources around.

I've accepted that I can't be 100% even, as I intended when I was a n00b Assistant Professor. What I am having a hard time with, however, is addressing the difficulties this creates in the lab. For example, sometimes Graduate Student X will complain about something that Graduate Student Y gets to do - even when that task is completely contraindicated given Graduate Student X's career plans. When I point these things out, no one is appeased.

I should restate that more clearly - I'm having a hard time dealing with my own emotions about my graduate students (correctly) perceiving that things are not 100% equally distributed in the lab. They don't seem to understand the above points, and I need to accept that this isn't something I can expect them to be okay with. Which means I need to deal with my own discomfort at being perceived as unequal - because I would be a fool to try and mentor any other way. Not everyone would get their own needs met, and I would be quickly out of money.

what do mentors get from their graduate students?

I am shocked and excited to see so many comments to my previous post about expressing anger at your mentors - obviously this topic has hit a nerve for a lot of people, and I think everyone's comments have been very helpful and interesting to read.

As I've blogged before, this topic has been particularly salient to me lately as the countdown toward my journey on the tenure track begins and due to the unexpected news that I will be mentoring a graduate student as soon as I start.

For years, I have discussed, worried, lamented, and ranted about the treatment that some graduate students (I recognize there are graduate students who get treated well by their advisors) receive at the hands of their mentors and wondered how the peers around me (and myself) could possibly grow up to perpetuate that problem. Now that the tables will be turned in my life, I am desperately worried that the only way I know how to treat my graduate students is unhelpful.

Anonymous Professor (yes, I have just given you a pseudonym, whoever Anonymous of April 4th at 4:16pm is) left a really interesting comment that some have already responded too - that comment seems to have already pushed some graduate student buttons. I wanted to read it with an open, objective mind and to say a big Thank You for your comment Anonymous Prof. Sometimes hearing the point of view of people from the other side is helpful. That being said, I think some of your comments deserve discussion (but I was hijacking my own comments). I think overall your comments make sense, but in no way do they reflect how many graduate students (including myself) see the role of a mentor or our role as scientists.

First, some background on me: I am a Ph.D. candidate with multiple publications, more than half of which are 1st or 2nd author publications. I have been hired at a research-based institution on the tenure track. I have excellent teaching evaluations and my yearly evaluations from my mentors are usually very positive. I say that not to boost my own ego but to tell you a bit about what kind of scientist I am. On top of that, I have never spent any of my advisor's money on my own research. My own stream of research was either unfunded, conducted using research assistants receiving course credit, funded by my own fellowship, or paid for out of my own pocket.

First, I want to address the idea that being the best damn graduate student you can be translates into being able to demand or deserve better treatment from your advisors: "If you are a great scientist, then you have the power to ditch your current advisor, find another advisor, and go do great work with someone else."

My skills as a scientist, however, have never translated into the ability to switch advisors and find new mentors to fund my research. First, as mentioned, my research has not required any funding or has been piggy-backed onto already funded projects of my advisors. Second, Dr. Smooth is the only researcher in my graduate program who has expertise in Corn Growth or Cow Studies, so using my fantabulous skills to switch to a new mentor who treats me like the golden scientist I am was never a possibility. I'm sure that this possibility would have existed were I in another discipline.

Second - I'm going to be short and blunt here - Dr. Smooth sees me as his property. I am not permitted to go work with other professors in my department, and if I do, I am punished by Dr. Smooth with less attention on my primary research, access to less resources, comments about my lack of discipline and self-centeredness, and an even slower turnaround on my work. The other professors are punished for "poaching" graduate students. This is on par with expressing anger directly, in my field. This is not a possibility in my work in my department.

Third, putting all the pressure on your graduate students to "earn" a mentor's time by their amazing skills completely discredits the point of novice training, in my opinion. More and more mentors (in my field) accept graduate student applicants who already have a certain skill, can serve as a productive cog in a research machine, and are simply more hands on deck to complete the advisor's research. Hope has an excellent point - if everyone was already an amazing scientist, they wouldn't even need to be in grad school. I wish that more students could be accepted based upon their actual raw potential than their immediate productivity, but I also understand why productive graduate students are important. That being said, putting the pressure on your students to "earn" your time (away from your family - I'm not sure any graduate student is asking you to sacrifice your family. In fact, we are desperate for mentors who manage to perform science and see their family) is passing off the responsibility to novices in your field.

This is a thought provoking comment that I want to address:

"More generally, I look at the bargain something like this. The advisor sweats his/her ass off to come up with funding, space, and other resources for you and to pay your salary. He/she may also devote some of his/her time to mentoring you. In return, he/she expects you to do good work....To turn it around: What does your advisor get out of spending time on you? Tenured profs have a ridiculous number of demands on their time (I work 60-80 hours/week). So what's the compelling argument why they should spend more time with you, and less with their family? Worth thinking about."

I agree this is something to think about, but I completely disagree with a lot of this comment (though I'm glad Anonymous Prof left it.) 

In this situation, why is a professor even taking a graduate student? This comment implies to me that graduate students are accepted only to be performers in a research machine that belongs to an advisor. Yes, that is part of the reason graduate students are accepted, and why "good" graduate students are accepted over "bad" graduate students - because they will be more productive. I know I might be a little innocent with this comment, but graduate students, in my opinion should also be accepted because a professor is willing to mentor a junior member of their field through the process of becoming a peer, and eventually senior member, in that field. Surely to god it is expected that a graduate student should receive some mentoring during their 4-10+ years they are in graduate school? I hope that wasn't what was intended by the comment that they "may" mentor you. If no one intended to mentor me, than they shouldn't have accepted me to their program! 

Second, believe it or not, graduate students also have ridiculous demands on their time. As a single female with no children, I regularly worked 60-80 hours/week during graduate school. Yes, my demands were different than that of a professor. Yes, in some ways my demands weren't as "important" as that of a professor. But graduate students are just as busy, in terms of raw time, as many professors are. 

Third - how is a graduate student to do "good" work if they are not given any training in how to do that work? 

But here is the most important reply I want to make to this comment. What does my mentor get out of spending time with me? Here are some of the things Dr. Smooth got from spending time with me:

• drafts of 7 manuscripts, most of which Dr. Smooth did not have time to write himself
• Edits and reviews for APA style, plus construction of a reference list on all manuscripts published during my graduate school career
• Supervision of the lab, including purchasing all supplies, scheduling and managing all of the research assistants and junior graduate students, maintenance of all the computers and lab equipment
• Grading of all final projects and theses conducted by independent research students
• Authorship on my own manuscripts, which were periphery to Dr. Smooth's primary research
• Someone to manage data collection, data entry, data clean-up, and conduct analyses for multiple research projects
• More specialized skills in my area that I can't discuss without increasing the likelihood of outing myself

Does that deserve a little mentorship so that I can publish my research and be a successful candidate for a member of my field when I graduate? I think personally I saved Dr. Smooth quite a bit of time, so if we're going to talk about "earning" mentorship, I think I did enough. 

However, Anonymous Prof makes a good point about how "good" graduate students are going to "earn" more attention from their mentors than "bad" graduate students. No one wants to spend time with someone they dislike or don't enjoy working with. In my experience, students who are struggling or are "too opinionated" are often blackballed from time with their mentors or set up into a situation where you have to wonder what came first - the disagreeable graduate student or their failure in every aspect of their graduate student career? This is human nature.

That being said, this is what perpetuates the problem I posted about in the first place. Students cannot speak up to their advisors to say "Hey, you're giving me some shit mentoring here!" because they are simply going to find themselves removed from any attention by their advisor at all. Not sure if this is what you intended Anonymous Prof, but all that is going is feeding a cycle where students have no power to defend themselves, because the very thing they need (help from their mentor) is going to be taken away from them as punishment.