Thread by @Sajeerp_

Are you starting your career as an assistant professor and guiding #PhD students for the first time?
Here are a few mentoring tips from the perspective of a current PhD student that may help you.

@AcademicChatter @PhDVoice @PhD_Genie #research @PhDsofIndia

1) Never keep lab meetings on Monday, Tuesday and weekends. Putting on Monday or Tuesday will force them to work on weekends. Respect the social life of PhD students. It's also good for their mental wellbeing.

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2) Regularly talk about the long term and short term impact that the PhD project is going to produce, like patents, high impact journal papers as well as the societal impact. This will motivate the PhD scholars to work harder, smarter and better.
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3) Arrange lab trips regularly, for example, a one day trip in two months and 3-4 day trip in each 6 months. Assign the job to arrange the trips to your PhD scholars from finding place and booking tickets to money management. This will teach them 100+ things that, PhD may not!

4) Assign jobs😄
For example you can assign jobs to your PhD scholars and give them positions such as Tour captain(who arrange trips for the lab), Conference manager(who check and keep track of conferences happening in your domain),safety manager( who make sure that safety

protocols are strictly followed in lab, Empaths ( who ensure mental wellbeing of group mates as well as a professor!), Materials head( who keep track of chemical stocks in the lab and place order when ever it's going to over), The HR guy ( who keeps track of jobs in your domain

and inform labmates about the skills need to be developed. This will make all your PhD scholars industry ready by end of the PhD if they wish to move to industry )
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5) Teach them about academic writing in the first 6 months itself. How to write articles with a flow. Push them to write review papers or comments. Make sure that, reviews gets published in a journal which will skyrocket their confidence.
Also, make sure that, this reviews are

written as a team with another PhD scholars from your lab. This will teach them about teamwork. In science, you can't achieve anything alone😄.
Hard work with a team + Innovative thinking + perseverance is the key👌🏿

6) Talk your PhD scholars about their family regularly, understand their financial conditions and the mental traumas they went through. Make sure that, you are approachable for any issues they are facing. Be their big brother/elder sister or a good friend

7) Discuss new ideas and motivate them to develop curious questions and ideas. Never mock any of their thoughts /ideas. Teach them how to choose between discarding an idea or going for it.

8) Involve them in proposal/grant writing as early as possible. Learning about how to convince the reviewers about your idea is very important. This will teach structured and effective writing. This help them to grab fellowships like @MSCActions as well as @serbonline funding😉

9) Motivate to take courses from other branches. For example, if you are a #Physics researcher, learning some #Philosophy and #Sociology may give you a better perspective on the problems and their impacts on society. My first conference presentation was in

Philosophical and sociological aspects of my PhD topic😁

10) Build a good lab culture. Take opinions regularly and promote working as a team. Make sure that there is no ego or any other issues between your PhD scholars. Your PhD scholars are your second family!

11) Tell them to make progress every day, Push them to think critically, motivate them to write something everyday. Take them for tea after your lab meetings and discuss science, politics, issues, about next trip😄. Make a good repo with your scholars.

That's it :)
Add your thoughts

Appreciate all their efforts to solve the problem, even if it's wrong. A small word like "fantastic effort" can make their day. Later, you can discuss what can go wrong and what went wrong in their solution and how to improve it.

@thesiswhisperer @hapyresearchers @SarcasticRes

May add your thoughts @ArindamPhysics @arindamkhan :)

If you guys think these suggestions are not practical, visit our lab (@nanoporegroup ) sometimes if you come to @CeNSEatIISc, @iiscbangalore by any chance. A big shout out to my Professor @man0jvarma for creating such a fantastic lab environment 🥰
#nanotechnology #nanopore

12) Ask them to build a side hustle/hobby if they are not already.
Ask to involve in sports/gardening or whatever they are interested in. I just started playing hockey and handball as well as Zumba after came to @iiscbangalore. For example,

Prof. @MayankIISc plays cricket with his group always. I regularly see Prof. @shankarkselva playing badminton with his #PhD scholars at IISc. My first badminton match after I started playing was against his team, and you know what happend next😁.So, suggestion is to engage

with your scholars. Try to be their mentor as well as a friend in every aspect. Remember, you are helping a person to grow, not only academically, as a responsible scientist with ethical and humanitarian values😁

#research #AcademicTwitter #AcademicChatter #phdlife #PhDChat

@UnrollHelper @Unrollme