diff --git a/2023/during-the-day/question-box-discussions.md b/2023/during-the-day/question-box-discussions.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000000000000000000000000000000000000..f22c11ff9e2c7698d93bcca05529dad2dd66ae8a --- /dev/null +++ b/2023/during-the-day/question-box-discussions.md @@ -0,0 +1,36 @@ +# Question-box notes +These are questions discussed during the last event of the day, the "quesion box" session. Disclaimer - Felix who took the notes may sometimes have missed or misunderstood parts of the discussion + +### How are your supervisors? +Some people have supervisors who are very hands-off. Many supervisors are "nice" and open to the ideas of the students, but could perhaps sometimes be more harsh and say "I don't think this is a very good idea" to the student suggestions. We discussed the matter in small groups for a bit. +One concrete suggestion to bring up to supervisors: Have a policy to give new students a "starter project" to get them started, e.g. a toy problem or a half-finished paper. + +### How much should I be publishing? +There's not a super strict limit at the department. If you have less than two you will likely struggle to put together a thesis. 4 papers is a rather common number. + +### What are pros and cons of writing a Lic thesis? + +**Cons:** +It takes a fair bit of time. How much time varies between students. + +**Pros:** +* It forces you to put your work in context, which makes it easier to formulate interesting problems for the remainder of the thesis. +* You get an external reviewer who thoroughly goes through your work. +* It puts a deadline in place where you have to start publishing something, which forces you to make plans accordingly for the start of your thesis time. + +### Should we have more meetings with the PhD representatives than once per year? +There seems to be interest to increase it to perhaps twice a year. + +### How should we combat imposter syndrome at the department? +Some suggestions: +Marko says he feels better after asking very clear questions to his peers i.e "do you understand this?" and after receiving five "no"s it feels better. +Johan G suggests that supervisors may have an important role. Often students work alone with material, e.g. reading an old book on theory which is hard to digest, and there's not really anyone else to compare to in terms of who understands the material. A supervisor can help with this, and also help with the "am I doing enough?" question. + +### Does/should different types of teaching (seminars vs "classical" exercises) give different numbers of GU's? +Olle states that currently it does not. Johan G says that by rules the amount of preparation that goes into teaching should be counted towards the GU's. + +### Should we have supervisors present their students' work at e.g. the Friday Seminars? +The motivation is to "force" supervisors to stay in touch with students projects. The Friday seminars are too tightly scheduled. One proposal is to have this as part of research focus day. + +### What is up with the $? +Max N has found the financial situation of each PhD student to be rather opaque. He suggests that we should have a system where each student can get an automated monthly summary of expenses and remaining financing. We realized soon that this particularly matters for WASP-students who to a greater extent than others are limited to a tight budget. We didn't reach a clear conclusion, but Max had asked Monica for such a manual summary which was rather easy to compile. Hence students who worry about this can probably ask Monica for now. \ No newline at end of file