Working with me

Thanks for your interest in working with me! If you’re already a full-time researcher, I’m always happy to chat about potential collaborations; please disregard this and reach out directly.

If you’re an undergraduate or master’s student at UMass, I may be able to supervise you on a project. I’m unfortunately unlikely to have time to supervise an independent study right now. Please read the following information carefully before reaching out:

• I don’t generally add undergraduate or master’s students to my late-stage projects, as getting a new collaborator up to speed usually slows down the project as a whole. If we work together, it will likely be on a new project that you lead. This also has a much higher potential upside for you, since you have a good shot at being the first author on any resulting paper, which makes a big difference on your CV.
• We can work together to develop a project idea. If you already have an idea you think is really interesting, particularly after at least some literature review, that’s a good sign to me that you have the drive necessary to lead a project. If you don’t have an idea yet, that’s fine too; I always have more ideas than I can work on, and I’m happy to share them with you.
• My involvement in the project would be as a mentor, not as a co-lead. This means that I’ll help you develop the project, meet with you regularly (at least once a week), and give you frequent feedback on your work and writing. Except in extreme circumstances, I won’t do the work or writing for you, both because I don’t have the time and because this should be your project, not mine.
• Important: Any project we work on together will start off with a highly aggressive timeline – specifically, aiming for submission to a conference or arXiv within four months of beginning work. There are several reasons for this:
  • Explicit timelines help to focus the scope of the project, even if they’re not always met. Regardless of who’s working on them, academic research projects have a tendency to “float along” for long periods even if they could have submitted a paper much earlier. This is bad for everyone involved, including the academic community as a whole.
  • The timeline allows us to have regular, honest conversations about whether the project is on track or not (specifically, at least once a month). It is a sad fact of both employment and mentorship that kindness and fairness are in tension: Every person deserves second, third, fourth and fifth chances, but others also deserve first chances, and it’s generally not possible to give everyone both. I have historically leaned away from fairness in this tradeoff, but I now believe it’s best for myself and others if I start to balance the tradeoff more evenly. Concretely, this means that, in order to be fair to all students, the collaboration might end early if we are regularly failing to meet reasonable and well-formulated goals, as evaluated on a monthly basis. (I define my notion of what a “reasonable” amount of work is later.) I will be very clear about this if it is in danger of happening.*
  • The timeline gives both of us a good sense of the skills and mindset required to complete a project in a reasonable amount of time: namely, frequent and clear communication, a willingness to ask for help, and a willingness to talk back when you think I’m wrong (e.g., “I don’t think this is a good use of our time,” “This timeline is impossible,” “I don’t understand what you’re asking me to do,” etc.). In light of this, when you reach out to me, please include a few sentences about a previous time you accomplished a project faster than you thought you could, and one skill I didn’t mention here that you found to be important. (I mean this to be a comprehension check more than a take-home assignment, so please don’t stress about it too much.)

  This timeline will be appropriately flexible – if not, it wouldn’t be research – but it’s important to me that we both understand the stakes and the expectations up front. In particular, I would aim for it to be achievable with 15-20 hours of solid work per week; in other words, it should be roughly equivalent to two moderate-difficulty courses. If you’re taking n courses and are quite confident that you could handle n + 2 while maintaining your health and happiness, this timeline is probably achievable for you. If you’re not sure, you’re still welcome to reach out – that’s what the conversation is for. As long as you’re honest with both me and yourself about your time constraints, I’ll be happy to discuss whether we can work something out.

If you’re still interested, given the above, please reach out and include an acknowledgement of the expectations I’ve laid out here. I can’t guarantee that I’ll be able to supervise you – there are periods in my research when I don’t have a single free hour for anything but my main projects – but I’ll do my best to respond to everyone who reaches out. I’m looking forward to hearing from you!

*(Note: I fully acknowledge an element of hypocrisy in this point, as the PhD mentorship process is generally one of near-infinite second chances, from which I’ve benefited abundantly. My perspective is that, since I’ve occupied many resources that could have given first chances to others, I should now give back by providing others with a fair shot at research. Nevertheless, I recognize that this is a highly imperfect solution, and am open to comments and criticisms in this regard.)