Your perspectives and development

The typical development during your research work with us is that you become more competent – in your specific topic, and in all aspects of research work, like literature research, reading, field work, experiments, lab work, or writing. You should expect to be more dependent on input from your supervisor at the beginning, and become more independent as you go along. If you interact frequently with your supervisor, you might experience this progress in the way the interaction changes, from pure instructions to more collegial interactions. This is one important reason why to keep interaction frequency with your supervisor high.
By definition, doing a Master, Dissertation or PhD thesis is not only the production of a scientific work, but (in case of Dissertation/PhD) the highest-possible formal teaching that you can receive in our academic system – it is a learning experience. You do not simply ‘work for us’, but you are supposed to learn (from us) how to do science. In supervising you, we try to teach you what we think is important in doing science. This will best work if you have an attitude of trust and respect towards us, granting us – based on the objective criteria of our publication record – the benefit of doubt in situations where your intuition tells you otherwise. Scientific work is a lot about finding out many things on your own. We encourage you to give us feedback to what extent you want to work independently. By default, we will give you all the support and head start we can give you. For example, we will not let you perform a basic literature research on a topic if we have collected the relevant literature ourselves already – we will just give you that literature collection and expect you to expand it (if possible). Our hope is that by telling you all we know, you may get to the point quicker where you find out things we do not know yet; that by telling you how to do things, you may get useful results as quick as possible. However, you might feel deprived of the chance to find relevant literature on your own, deprived of the chance to develop your own methods, or the chance to develop your own data evaluation strategy. You may correctly assume that these chances are important learning opportunities you do not want to miss. If you feel we guide you too much, please express this feeling. Usually, the more you get into your topic, the more you will have the competence, and the opportunity, to work on your own initiative. It is our experience that you will grow into working on your own initiative over time. If you want to focus on this aspect and be given more freedom to develop your own concepts right from the start, communicate this wish. We strongly advise you to understand feedback we give you on your texts, on your presentations, on your work, as part of such a learning experience. If you give us time, we think you will experience that our aim is not to criticise you, but to make our common work better, and to make you share our ideas on how science can be done.
In theory, one automatic outcome of your work should be that you become more knowledgeable and erudite in your specific topic than your supervisor. This could well be a specific aim you set for yourself.
You will develop new ideas about your own personal and professional perspectives during your work with us. We will develop own opinions about your perspectives, and invite you to discuss these with you. In particular, if you feel, during our work with us, that you want to continue working with us, or want to pursue an academic career in general, we encourage you to discuss this aim with us the moment you have it (and not only at the end of your contract). We may be able to give you advice and feedback on your perspectives, including supporting you in grant applications for postdoc work, helping you generate a network etc., even without being co-authors.
We want you to succeed, and we want you to be happy.