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 Loosely Translated · 1 Comment

Can a PhD save the world?

I, like so many of us, always wanted to be a superhero. As a child, I dreamed of being Ironman. I was going to be a genius billionaire playboy   philanthropist who would bring about world peace, save the world from alien invasions and use my technology to develop cleaner sources of energy. I was also going to fly and shoot beams out of my hands!

My dream changed as I got older. In high school, I went from wanting to be like Ironman with the suit to wanting to be a virologist in a hazmat suit curing Ebola in West Africa. At the start of my postgraduate career, I went from wanting to be a virologist in West Africa to being a mycologist studying the fungi that kill trees. I pursued a PhD to help the world!

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Now that I’m here, I feel like my research won’t have as much impact as someone else researching safer energy or a vaccine for HIV. In truth, many PhDs probably don’t think their work matters or that they are making a REAL difference.

Number of PhDs awarded in the USIf you look at the number of PhDs in the United States between 1957 and 2016, you’ll see an almost tenfold increase in the number of doctorates awarded—a trend that exists in many other countries too. While there are more people walking around with PhDs today than there were in the 1950s, it hasn’t helped solve any of the major problems facing the world in 1957 or today. War, inequality, climate change, biodiversity loss and clean energy were all problems in 1957 and are still today (in some cases, even worse). If we adopt an extremely simplistic view, it would seem that all the PhDs in the world are not having much of an impact. That makes me feel worse. Fortunately, it’s a very simplistic view.

We understand a lot more about the world today than we did in 1957. The purpose of a PhD, among other things, is to generate knowledge. Knowledge drives humanity forward; it doesn’t matter if it comes from studying the migratory patterns of birds, assessing the importance of cultural heritage in the 21st century, or developing a new vaccine for HIV. All this research generates knowledge which allows us to understand ourselves, our world and the universe better. And this knowledge is the starting point to effect change and growth. Because, in the right hands, knowledge can be used to change policy, improve education, create technology that makes the world a better place.

Jane Goodall summed it up perfectly: “Only if we understand, will we care. Only if we care, will we help. Only if we help shall all be saved.”

So, this knowledge – however big, however small – has to reach beyond the thesis. If you think of the size of our global problems – migration, war, disease, climate change — science communication and engagement with society has never been more important. But it’s a difficult road, trying to communicate science to non-scientists…

Bill-Nye-Saves-the-WorldEven someone like Bill Nye the Science Guy battles. His show, “Bill Nye Saves the World,” which debuted in 2017, seeks to tackle the anti-science sentiment in the US by educating through entertainment. It has been met with a lot of criticism (obviously) and hasn’t received the wonderful ratings it was looking for.  Niel deGrasse Tyson’s show, “Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey,” was Emmy nominated and praised for its success (mainly amongst space enthusiasts). Tyson won the Public Welfare Medal from the National Academy of Sciences for the show and its promotion of science. Unfortunately, it only reached 1.3% of all U.S. households. Scientists seem to be famous among scientists and science enthusiasts, which is not a large enough part of the population or a part we need to be communicating more with.

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We can’t expect a handful of scientists to do all the communicating. To draw in a larger audience, we need to speak to a more diverse audience, of different races, religions, countries, political views, etc. To do that, we need very diverse scientists to present science issues that unite global audiences around shared values and what we can do to address them. Here lies an opportunity to become the next science hero, like Lee Berger, Jill Farant or Nox Makunga… only better, a science superhero. Become the Ironman or Wonder Woman of the science universe and use your PhD powers for good. Talk and help save the world.