Saturday, July 5, 2008

Battered advisors

Since I didn’t have the best advisor relationship, I have recently been reading a lot of books on being a good advisor, trying to glean any kind of advice I can. This has led me to start thinking that the advisor-advisee relationship is a lot like a parenting relationship. Which takes me to my next point – do battered advisees become abusive advisors?

There is a lot of evidence in the parenting world that this is case, but no one has every studied it in the advisor-advisee world (maybe someone should). But I’m particularly concerned because I don’t want to be an abusive advisor. I doubt any professor sets out in life wanting to be an abusive advisor, but after spending the last 5 yrs of my life hating myself, I don’t want to inflict that particular kind of torture on future generations of students, knowingly.

So, where are the advice books on reversing trends in advisor-advisee relationships – how not to be the person who taught you?

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