Researcher's Mindset: People I Avoid Collaborating With - Part I

Throughout my journey from a know-it-all freshman to a skeptic Ph.D. student, I made many mistakes that shaped me, for the better or worse, to the person that I am today. In this journey, there were times that I was a bit too individual and resistant to develop certain characteristics that, I now understand, are essential for a researcher in any field. Most of the time, people discuss the positive characteristics that a good researcher must have. Sometimes, discussing the opposite helps to internalize such traits and this is what I plan to do here. All that is written is derived from my personal experience, I was in these states of mind, even if briefly, at some point in my life. Therefore, the essay focuses on an undergraduate researcher, simply because this is mostly when I learned my lessons. I believe they apply to a more general audience though.

Needless to say, this is a personal opinion essay and should be treated as such. Taking any advice from this essay without filtering properly for one's situation is not the intended way of reading it; as these are just my personal opinions. There is a high chance that more appropriate advice can be obtained from one's academic mentors and/or friends. The purpose of this essay is simply to show that meta-thoughts on becoming a researcher are important parts of actually becoming one and the thinking process should not be left on automatic mode.

Type 1. The one where the student wants to get a publication before all else

Early publications help to build a researcher's career, especially if the student is an undergraduate and earned good praise for their unique contribution to the project from their recommendation letter writers (from now on, recommenders for short). Emphasis on the unique contribution. I think this is the main idea that is missed by many undergrads that just push their PIs to publish a paper prematurely, "because they have a grad school application coming up." And these people are a nightmare to work with. What they want not only hurts their own cause, it is ethically and pragmatically wrong to publish half-thought speculations as results in an academic journal. Let me elaborate:

Whenever I receive a CV from an undergraduate that wants to work with me, I do check their publication section very carefully and go through their papers briefly if there is any. Here, a rushed publication shows itself in the introduction and conclusion sections, since the impatient researchers tend to keep the part featuring their own work more rigorous than the part where they connect to the actual literature, even though the storytelling of a paper is arguably the most important part in the publication process. It is how we advertise our work, and somehow, this part comes across as more trivial and unimportant to type 1 researcher, which gives me the sign that the paper is prematurely published and I should stay away from collaborating with this person. I am just a stupid Ph.D., people at the admission committees have been doing this for years. Even if I can catch a premature publication, we can be damn sure that they can too.

If you find yourself in a state of mind where you want to rush a publication because you wish to meet a deadline, be very careful of the following:

i) Make sure that you rush yourself by working over hours rather than the publication itself by taking shortcuts.

ii) Remember that a publication does not mean much unless there is a respected recommender supporting it and emphasizing your unique contribution to it.

iii) Never ever take shortcuts on the ethics. Reputation takes years to build and seconds to destroy!

Type 2. The one that keeps asking half-thought questions

When people mentor students, I think type 2 is the type that they fear the most. Time is the most valuable asset of a researcher, we find great joy in sharing it with collaborators to discuss science. This is why we are getting paid anyway. What we hate though is this one student that keeps asking questions whose answers could be found through a simple literature search, or even in the paper that we sent to them a few days back that they faked reading it. The solution here is a very simple one, just think about your questions a few minutes before asking them and do a quick search on Google and on the literature. Moreover, culminate questions together and ask them all at once, instead of asking them one by one. Let us put this in a bit better context.

I personally prefer to put my research time in distinct segments. It takes time for me to focus and de-focus from a particular subject, so it is time-wise and energy-wise beneficial for me to talk about a subject for a focused hour than to go on-and-off about it during the day. With any student I mentor, I seek that they respect my way of working, which is pretty common in academia. This has its own perks: Most of the time, asking culminated questions spark discussions that would not be possible otherwise. Moreover, micromanaging never works in research, answers given by the mentor should lead to diverse thoughts in the mind of the student and stimulate even more questions in the correct direction. To sum up:

The best questions to ask an academic mentor are the ones that will lead to even more interesting ones. The technical ones do not have this requirement, obviously, but even then they should be well-thought and researched before being asked and should not result from the student’s lack of reading the assigned literature.

Type 3. The one that constantly sucks up/tries to impress

Positive feedback is as much valuable as negative feedback and I have given plenty of positive feedback to my academic mentors in the past. Likewise, there is nothing wrong with trying to impress your supervisor in a job. However, these two should never be mixed! A mistake I made in the past is to give positive feedback to someone before I needed their recommendation letter. My intentions were pure, I genuinely wanted to express my gratitude for my mentor. Yet, she called me out on it and I am so glad that she did. The right attitude would be to wait, obviously. Now, this was the harmless portion of it. Let us come to the big no-no that I somehow keep seeing in academia.

If an undergrad is working with a postdoc or a Ph.D., then the undergrad is working with a postdoc or a Ph.D. While this seems like a very banal tautology, it is very surprising how many undergrads, including me at some point in my life, miss it. If you have results, you should share them with your supervisor first. If your supervisor finds them useful and not a waste of PIs time, only then you should try to present your results to the professor. Impressing a professor is not a number’s game, it is not linked to how many times you meet with a certain person. It depends on the quality of that meeting! Postdocs and Ph.D.s are a great help in securing a high-quality meeting with the professor, use them wisely! Of course, if the PI approaches you about your results, by all means, share them. But, the moment you perform certain acts with the purpose of “impressing someone,” it is very easy to detect and will lead to the opposite outcome and a complete waste of your research time.

Research should not be done with alternative motifs. Either you love it and want to spend your life doing it or you don’t. Both are fine and completely acceptable. In fact, being a researcher, you are most likely to be underpaid than overpaid, so I do not see another feasible way of becoming a researcher than loving it. This is how you impress a PI, just do a good job and focus on what you love. PIs get constant feedback on everyone in their group, if you love your job, it will show. You do not need to (and should not under any circumstances) put your effort into self-promotion or sucking up!

Final Words: There are some more types that I wanted to discuss, however, I find three to be a good number of subtopics in an essay. Less than three conveys less information than ideal, more leads to confusion and miss-understandings. I will most likely write a follow-up to this essay at some point, not sure when. I wish that no one takes what is written in this essay personally. As I said in the beginning, I became all these types at some point in my researcher’s life. Most people do. These are the types that we grow out of eventually, and of course, the sooner the better. I wrote this essay to put emphasis on the sooner!