Posted on by Mbuyi Shadrack

Supervisors are a nightmare…

I have often heard people talking about supervisors being a nightmare. Most often it’s supervisoralluded that supervisors are looking out for their own interests rather than those of the student. Furthermore, they may be the sole reason why the students would quit their graduate programs and look for alternative opportunities. I am still with my initial supervisor, so I guess this relationship is working out…maybe?

This year I met one of the finest minds of our generations — at least that is what he appears to be! He’s trained in ornithology but his research interests have spread farther than that. He has allowed himself to explore any field and opportunity that may be connected or share a boundary with his field of interest. To my eyes he is one of the researchers that we need to make academic life fashionable (so to speak). But he’s the kind of person who develops new-world problem solvers rather than research and academic robots. Of course, I may be biased, because I think I think the way he thinks 😉

HelpingBut, he isn’t my supervisor – I am an ecotoxicologist at heart. And this meant I’ve had to adjust to a supervisor I didn’t choose for myself. There was a new lecturer in the department, and since his research interests aligned perfectly with mine, he was assigned as my supervisor.

At first I was okay with this but once I got to sit down with this new person and got down to work, it became my worst nightmare. I could not, for the life of me, understand what the student-supervisor relationship meant to him. For example, when deciding on the title of my research project, we sat and discussed what I wanted to do and streamlined my objectives. When it came to the title I sent him my suggested titles, as my former supervisor had trained me to, and requested his input. He just sent me a totally new title and said, “Use that one.” Sitting alone I thought to myself, “Am I a messenger now?” Well, I did go to ask him about it but that’s the story for another day. It was many other things that just put me off. The whole situation became extremely tense, but just recently I came to a few realizations that are helping me to learn from my new position.

Firstly, I am a student. I have a responsibility and a duty to learn, grow my network and develop myself. I cannot learn all of these from one person. More so, exposure to different work ethics and understanding why people do certain things and how they do them is an integral part of academic growth.

Secondly, nobody is the same. You can have two people coming from the same training and are doing the exact same research but you will find that they will still behave differently and will approach their research differently. This is about my academic growth and development. It is not about who is on the other end and what they do. They may not be the best of supervisors in the whole world because maybe they too are still learning, but they have something to offer too.

Communication is just as important as doing research. So much of what I’ve learned about research, overcoming mistakes, and working with somebody new came from the fact that I could summon my courage and talk to my supervisor. No matter the supervisor, s/he can’t always instigate conversation or know what’s troubling you if you don’t speak up.

It is also important to have people around to talk to about your challenges as a student. I have academic mentors, friends in academia who are integral part of my journey. They not only help me get through the rough academic progress but also call me to order whenever I lose my professionalism.

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That leads to the final bit of truth: even students are professionals. An undergraduate student recently said, “We are professional students”. It was quite funny at the time but now I realize that being a postgraduate student also means being a professional student. This means respect to fellow students and supervisors, time management skill and communication skill. Moreover, it also highlights mannerism and the importance of good self-conduct.

This is how I keep winning. This is how I keep going back to the lab and working to develop myself as an academic.

Posted on by lutshwenya · 6 Comments

Alcoholism: The plight of our father figures

For as long as I can remember, I have been the type of person to dive in deep and struggle to come back from a bad habit. I spend so much time watching movies, I rarely have regular meals and I spend so much money that a savings account is non-existent in my life.  I did not list my drinking problem here, because the past month has been a continuous — and so far successful — mission to curb that thirst. Truth be told, thanks goes to the gruesome “JanuWorry” we are emerging from; the struggle has been real and helpful! Jokes aside though, I am proud of how I have handled myself this month, for the first time in a while. Change is imminent!

After a Saturday of heavy drinking towards the end of 2017, I decided, with a friend of mine, to challenge myself to quit drinking in this New Year. Well, maybe I should rather attempt to have an occasional beer here and there … just in case the whole quitting thing doesn’t work. In all honesty, this is definitely not the first time setting such a challenge for myself. In the previous years, I would set small challenges like not drinking for a month. In these times, I lost more often than I won. The difference between then and now is that I have now seen the bad side to my drinking – one I would not want to ever see again. Also, after almost being brutally beaten up in a fight while drunk, I have decided that this is a change I really need in my life. Thus I have devised an action plan to combat my drinking problem. The plan includes:

  1. Keeping super busy. Apart from blogging, I have started a mentoring program to interest first year students into research.
  2. Joining the gym and finding new hobbies.
  3. Avoiding things that can trigger heavy drinking. This includes staying away from places or activities that promote heavy drinking.
  4. Practice saying “No!” I will apply this concept in many areas of my life. I have been previously described as a “Yes man”, that man has to go!
  5. Find better ways to manage stress. Such as talking to friends and family more.

I realize that this change will come at a cost, but it is do-able nevertheless.

I have witnessed firsthand how alcohol can damage and control people’s lives. I grew up in an area where most father figures (including my own father) were serious alcoholics, even today some still are. Being the people’s person that I am, I was liked by all those fathers and the feeling was mutual, considering that their drunkenness loosened their pockets. I would always hang around where they drank, got a few coins, but never did I imagine that someday that person could be me. The thought of being addicted to alcohol after seeing what it has done to many of the men I grew up admiring — intelligent men with dreams and aspirations — terrifies me more now that I’m halfway through my PhD studies. I cannot afford to screw up now.

I have very few memories of my father being sober (he passed away when I was still young). The time he spent drunk took away all the happy thoughts I could have had of him, all the advice he could have given me about life and how to better handle myself as a man. I believe this is possibly the case with the average Kasi kid out there. Where I grew up, the typical child did not have someone to advise them through their life experiences, hence many of them have turned out to be the same alcoholics as their fathers were. As much as this is not reason enough for one to fail, it is clear that the cycle of alcoholism is one of the problems in the Kasi. However, I believe that there is never a good enough reason for you to stay in a situation that is not good for you.

Our fathers probably had a lot of time on their hands, they did not have work, leaving them with a lot of time. I believe drinking was a way of passing time — time they could have spent imparting wisdom to us, ensuring that we don’t end up like them. The same can happen when you are doing your masters or PhD studies. You find yourself with too much time on your hands (as you are the one in control of your time) and drinking becomes a way to pass time as well. Later, when things do not go right with research, we realise that we never had that much time to begin with. We start stressing and still use alcohol as a tool of stress alleviation (at least that’s the case with me).

I like to think I am not an alcoholic yet and that I have better control than otata endikhule phambi’kwabo (the fathers I grew up looking up to), and as such, I really want to quit drinking this year – while I still have control over it. I feel that it’s important for me to quit before it becomes a bad habit that disturbs those around me, before I hurt someone or develop an alcohol related disease. This is an addiction that can kill me someday. Most importantly, I want to quit drinking before it takes up my time, time that I could have spent chasing my dreams and being around the people I claim to love like most of the men I grew up looking up to.