dilema

[womaninphysics]

So, as some of you may or may not know, I used to work for a terrible/evil/mean/awful adviser.  He makes all of his students and postdocs pretty miserable.  I mean, sure, some of them deal with it better than others, but they are all unhappy with him in general.  I know some other advisers who some of their students and post-docs love and some hate

Comments

tricky

[anonymous]

It is tricky, because you don't want to seem like you are THAT person who just won't move on and holds grudges, but I think it would probably be good for you to meet the new students and at least give them the info in a way that doesn't overstate his evilnesses

[anonymous]

I don't think you should post signs or anything saying not to work for him, but if you hear the newbies talking about it, then you should tell them your experience with him. CSU was small enough that I was able to meet all of the senior grad students and gather the dirt on all of the profs. I know CU has a lot bigger physics department, so it is a lot harder to interact with people who don't work in your specific field. Maybe you and some other senior grad students could invite some of the new ones out one night and discuss your experiences? I was really grateful that some of the grad students did that for us when I was a first year.

Wow, that was a lot of sentences with the words "grad student" in it.

[477150n]

Chem students also do rotations, which seems like a good system, since you can see what you'd be getting into and make friends in the group who will give you the real dirt.

He and J. seem to have an understanding... at the least, she is impressively productive and seems to have her life under control in general, as far as I can tell, whether they actually get along or not. I would expect her and also L. to say things which are diplomatic, but make it clear that he is generally considered to be difficult to work for. If you feel like you need to do something, you could tell your concerns to the two of them. I think if anyone started asking around a little bit, which they hopefully do, they would find that he has that reputation. I certainly heard it (from you but also from other people) when I was looking.

I think there are students who do well with an advisor like that (not me, that's for sure). It's actually in the current students' best interest to be up front, so they can find those students and weed out the other ones.