embodiment

I spent the week last week at a workshop on post graduate supervision. It was both challenging and interesting. On the one hand, we spent time interrogating our own approaches to supervision - both good and bad, and on the other hand we spent time learning about the issues which need to be addressed through the process of supervision. It is not enough to know how - we must also have a reasonable understanding of why.

Over the last few days, a thought has struck me as a result of something someone said during the course of discussion. She was talking about ... I am not really clear about what she was getting at, but it made me think. I am reading a research report by a young researcher in my lab, and I am struck by the importance of acknowledging the effect we have as scientists on the work that we do. When I ask a question, I affect the answer. We try to remove ourselves as a variable whenever we do research and try to make the work as reproducible as possible, but inevitably, there remains a small part of us which affects the outcome of the research.

We know this and that is why when an experiment fails so many students take it personally. Their first response is not that the hypothesis was wrong, but rather that they failed. Somebody else could doubtless have done it better. One of the most important things I can do as a supervisor is to help that student move from the point 

“what did I do wrong?!”

                                   to

                                             “why did the experiment not work in the expected way?”

Just sometimes I think I should ask myself the same question… not “what did I do wrong?” but “why is this student not working out the way I expected?”

Sometimes the answers open the door to new and unexpected adventures!