How to be a terrible thesis advisor (excerpts)

[VietHai.Nguyen@di.epfl.ch (Viet Hai NGUYEN)]

Chep cho cac ba'c vai dong do.c choi.
cheers,
VH

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(by Nigel Ward: a young faculty member and adivisor 
who hopes others can learn from his mistakes)
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- Assign student thesis topics based on the section headings in your
grant proposal, or on the boxes of the flowchart for your master plan.

- read your students' papers at most once

- never visit the laboratory; learn about your students' work only from
what they tell you

- have students handle computer system administration, and let them
think it counts as research

- avoid meeting with student individually. Do all advising out in
public, at seminars.

- always come unprepared for seminars; you are smart enough to fake it.

- expect nothing from your student and subtly let them know this.

- give all your students the same research topic, but with slightly
different names. If this is the same topic as your own dissertation
topic, all the better.

- never suggest that your students contact other professors or other researches.

- let your students submit articles to third-rate journals.

- encourage your students to work on fashionable problems.

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