I turfed a student today. She has not produced any work in a year. She has not responded to my requests, delivered via email, notes attached to her workstation, and face-to-face, to tell me about her (lack of) progress on her project. She habitually skips classes, and when she does show up, she sleeps -- even in small seminars. Her graduate GPA is about 3.2.
I gave her a project three years ago, a cherry project on which we have now been scooped. She dropped it after refusing to educate herself, either formally or informally, in the statistical techniques she needed to make headway on it, and complained that it was "too hard." I was taken aback; I told her that if she didn't like the project then she should decide what she wanted to pursue and present it to me. To her credit, she found something (which I found trivial and uninteresting), but eventually dropped that too. She was poison in the lab, infecting the other students with her attitude. She was miserable, both in performance and mood.
In theory this was a slam-dunk. There's no point in keeping a student in a program when there's no hope of her finding a job doing what she's training to do. In practice this was really hard. Unlike most students in this situation, and I have encountered several, she showed no signs of going away. She registered for classes for next fall and requested a TA assignment. I had to smack her with a clue-by-four.
Whose fault was this? I am a laissez-faire advisor. I don't like to pressure my students. I make myself available at my students' requests. This student did not ask me for anything, but needed so much.
Tuesday, May 26, 2009
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17 comments:
Ultimately, the fault rests squarely on her. It sounds as if you did all you could to prod her on; the lack of motivation is what did her in.
Once they hit grad school, you can't lead them down the path. They have to want to do the work!
I'm going to guess she has undiagnosed mental issues that popped up when she got to grad school-- that would explain the sleep, and the avoidance. Its not your fault, certainley, but what kind of chat did you have with her when you let her go? I know I let down one of my professors in undergrad because it was taking me at least twice as long to do the reasearch i needed to do as it should-- but once I went to a psychiatrist, I became a good worker bee for future advisors.
If a student has not learned by grad school that she has to be proactive about counseling, advising, and pretty much everything to do with college in general, then perhaps a graduate degree is not really what that student should be pursuing.
This dovetails nicely with my developing theory regarding "higher education for all" vs. "higher education for people who actually can hack it."
Mental issues? Maybe. Or too much partying? Partying is a very common cause for lack of sleep in students. And spoiled by "no child left behind"?
Sad story. The problem is always to decide when such a student should be asked to leave the program. Three years sounds like plenty of time for finding an opportunity to do something.
Hm. For a minute there, I thought you'd just described a former grad student who left my current lab a few months ago. Our version of this left of her own accord, but the combination of unwilling to learn and poisonous attitude describes my joyfully departed former colleague perfectly. A wonderful example of how not to be a good graduate student.
It is a sad story. I don't believe that anyone needs to accept blame or fault for her failure.
While I am fond of many of my students, their personal lives are only my affair to the extent that they inform or involve me. You cannot diagnose mental illness, change her behavior, remove her from a destructive relationship, or otherwise make her able to succeed as a graduate student. Thus, you could not know nor address what she was going through that contributed to her problem and you are not in a position to help her, other than removing her from a position she cannot or will not perform.
It is equally unkind to sustain a graduate student clearly unable to be successful as it is to quash a successful student. What you did was needed, and no fault need be attached.
I agree with all commenters. She did herself in, for whatever reason.
Indeed, it's a sad, sad story. What does a person do with his/her life once they've been punted out of a grad program? Wow. And especially at your uni, which I hear is a good one.
Wow. That is sad. You can only do so much for someone who won't help themselves, especially on the graduate level. This sounds like a classic case of the student who got out of college, and had no idea what to do with herself, so she applied to grad school... which isn't where she needed to be. I hope she can address her issues and find something she is passionate about doing.
Miss Kitty et al., I am not sure how sad this really is. This student has graduate coursework and maybe an M.S. out of this. And better to have left a good university than a "bad" one. There's lots of life ahead.
Sounds like depression to me. It can't be 'no child left behind' because that didn't start until she was in college already. Getting booted may be what gets her to find some help, or at least relieve the situation that she seemed to be being passive-aggressive about.
Anyway, no blame to you. She didn't do the work, for whatever reason.
Oops, I hit post before I put my name in. It still sounds like depression to me. No blame to you.
Having once been a very similar student, I can say that you probably did her a favor. If she figures that out, she can still do well.
I definitely agree it sounds like she deserved it and it was mostly her fault.
But to be a devil's advocate in your comments, there are also people who just do not work well with laissez-faire advisors. Mine is very hands off and I prefer that kind of mentoring. However, my labmate has interpreted this to mean that our advisor thinks she is stupid, can't hack it, and isn't worth any attention.
I think there are students who might need more guidance at the beginning of graduate school and need to be given the "OK" to take control of their own education.
Yes, some people can't hack it - but let's not forget how different a graduate degree can be from an undergraduate degree. Here, at MSCU, undergrads get their hands held and no one tells them anything about what grad school is like or what they're supposed to do when they get there. They end up completely confused with what they're supposed to be doing. In some cases, I think some hand holding at the begin to teach them to be independent is well worth the wait.
Of course - I'm a) a grad student b) someone who has never advised a grad student and c) Someone who has a laissez fair advisor and d) knows nothing about your specific situation other than what you blogged...
The consequence for inadequate performance is dismissal, whether you're a grad student or a prima ballerina. No fault accrues to you. I hope that she wakes up and smells the chai latte; Real Life is ecstatically exciting - but you have to put your nickel in to get the candy out.
I appreciate what Psycgirl says but -- at a university as large as the LSU where the AP appears to work, you can't expect advisors to be hands on, it's too big and there are too many people. Letters of recommendation to this kind of university say specifically that this student can handle that atmosphere. A different school could be a better fit and that might help with the depression, too (which I'm sure is real).
I'm only licensed to be a doctor in a physics lab, so I can't diagnose depression via a third hand description of this student's behavior, but I can offer an alternative explanation.
I'd be looking at where this student came from. As high school devolved to junior high, many colleges have devolved to high-school-style learning. Just as many students leave high school unprepared for college, I consider it entirely plausible that this student left college unprepared for a top-flight graduate school. You don't get a degree by putting in your time.
One other academic blog I read includes frequent stories about grad students who behave pretty much like undergrads at the community college where I teach.
You don't say how this student was paying for college (other than the mention of a TA request), but might as well not borrow any more money if it isn't ever going to pay off.
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