Hi guys..new on here!ive got a bit of a fear among loads of others!hehe!just startin my phd in middle of sept and its in the uni i did my undergrad in. the thing is the phd students are used to supervise the final year undergrads in their honours projects...thats all fine and dandy because my phd student was into his 4th year and i gleaned loads of info from him and he carried out any radioactive stuff i had to do. anyhoo, what im worried about is that my supervisor has told me that a final yr will def b doin a project with me because theres no-one else to do it. they start their projects in late november...by that time ill only be getting to grips with a few of the techniques and the subject in general and the undergrad will be expecting me to be an expert etc and to do bits and pieces for them......was just wonderin if anyone has had same experience or what other uni's are like for this!cheers:)

Hi Ashpan,

I had similar experience; and I was very aware that I was "supervising" some really clever students that would probably get a better degree grade than me . I treated it more like a collaboration; explain what my aims were for that year; ask them what they hoped to get out of their project, and then allocated tasks for us both that would be mutually beneficial.

Focusis the most important thing - don't let the student lose track of project aims. I would suggest that at the start of each day they write in their lab book a paragraph outlining their hypothesis and practical aims for that day. That way they have to answer a lot of their own questions and not rely too much on you to "do bits for them". Of course you may have to show them how to operate machines etc but if you really don't know how to do it be honest and tell them you're new at this too: I found that they respected that and it makes the so-called supervising a friendlier process.

If you have technicians they are always good to go to for help when you're really stuck.

you're a phd and they are undergrads therefore you are always correct even if you are actually wrong ;) :D

I had a PhD student involved in the teaching on my recent MSc. Said person was that awful they got taken off teaching duties there were that many complaints. A reflection of the consumer driven nature of education. When your paying thousands of pounds for something you want someone who knows what they are doing.

One of the students in my department got loads of undergrad complaints about his teaching too.

Don't have to help with projects, but will teach eventually and a bit scared. Just keep telling myself that I only have to stay on chapter ahead of them in the introductory textbook!

Do you have any choice in the matter, as it seems a lot to take on in your first year?

I had to look after a final year undergrad in my first and second years of PhD in a lab-type situation and it was SOOOO awful (nothing against the students, it was just such a nightmare situation). It meant that two days of every term-time week I didn't want to come to work! (my happiest memory from this period is the day I forgot my lab key )
I can't really go into the details of why it was so bad, too project specific maybe? (and you haven't even started yet), but what it boils down to is the fact that I really felt I was doing my supervisor's job - I had so much responsibility and he didn't even have to be there.
I'm not sure this is a situation you can avoid (must do what your supervisor tells you), but if I'd known what would be required of me and how miserable it would make me I'd probably have rethought the PhD thing.

Maybe this is just my personal problem, if I wasn't cut out for supervision of a student, I shouldn't have taken the studentship on...but I don't really think that supervision of a student should be such a large part of PhD training (going to stop now, I went on for a very long time about this on a message long since deleted and it didn't solve anything)

I think you've got a point Sue; there's a world of differene between working togther with one or two interested students on a shared topic (what I was describing above) and running round like an idiot after 10 average-to-gormless students who all have "just one question - just another quick question".

In our case it was cos the uni takes increasing numbers of fee-paying students whilst not increasing the staff accordingly.

Well, it wasn't quite like that, I wasn't blaming the students in my last post. The problem was I couldn't find anything for them to do...anyway, it's all in the past for me.

cheers for the replys guys....to add on i just broke my hand playin drunkin rugby over the weekend.....i really shouldnt b supervisin any1 should i eh>?!i still have one typin hand tho....yipee!no pipette hand tho!.....yippeee/boooo...dont know which one!

i have never heard of PhD students supervising FYPs - at my university they are all done by lecturers...thankfully

A lecturer got the push [I believe] from LSE for blowing the whistle on that very thing. Apparently at open days he advised prospective students to look elsewhere as much undergrad teaching was undertaken by PhD students. It was in the THES about 6 weeks ago.

Well despite my moan yesterday I think it's usually a good thing to supervise FYPs; I can't believe it's against any rules cos it's done at pretty much every uni I know of. If you're going to stay in academia you will be teaching at some point so you may as well get the practise in now. And it is one way to make sure you stay on your toes about your subject.

We have a tutorial system in my department that would fall apart if it weren't for PhD supervisors