Over the years, I've told colleagues and friends about things I have seen or experienced. Many times, people have said that I should write them down so that they won't be lost and forgotten, since some of them might be useful parts of our history. I've been writing them down, without being sure what I would do with them. I decided to gradually post them on this website, and see what reactions I get. I suggest reading from the bottom up (starting with the August 2017 post "The Meritocracy"). Thoughtful and kind feedback would be useful for me, and would help me to revise the exposition to make it as useful as possible. I hope that while you read my stories you will ask yourself "What can I learn from this?" I'm particularly interested in knowing what you see as the point of the story, or what you take away from it. Please send feedback to asilverb@gmail.com. Thanks for taking the time to read and hopefully reflect on them!

I often run the stories past the people I mention, even when they are anonymized, to get their feedback and give them a chance to correct the record or ask for changes. When they tell me they're happy to be named, I sometimes do so. When I give letters as pseudonyms, there is no correlation between those letters and the names of the real people.

Tuesday, September 26, 2023

Advice on Advice

She generally gave herself very good advice (though she very seldom followed it)
                                        —Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, by Lewis Carroll

I've given advice elsewhere. Here, I'll give some advice about advice.

My most important advice on advice is to value advice from those who have experience and expertise more than advice from those who don't.

When I arrived at the University of California at Irvine as a professor, I was told that the math department had a program where math majors could request a mentor to advise them on applying to grad school, and faculty could volunteer to mentor students. 

Over the years, students and colleagues had sought my advice and seemed to value it. So I volunteered to be a mentor, and was assigned a senior.

The senior wanted to get a PhD in mathematics, but insisted on only applying to Masters degree programs. She thought that a Masters degree was a prerequisite for applying to a PhD program.

I advised her to apply to PhD programs, for several reasons. Such programs would provide funding, while Masters programs were more likely to make students pay. At my previous university, Ohio State, the bar was higher for students who already had Masters degrees than for those who didn't, so a Masters degree could be a disadvantage when applying for a PhD program. If she got a Masters degree and then decided to go elsewhere for the PhD, she could still do so. Plus, graduate admissions committees that felt she wasn't ready for the PhD program could decide to admit her to the Masters program.

The senior told me I was wrong. Why? Because some first year grad students told her that one doesn't get into a PhD program without having a Masters degree. She believed that they knew more than I did about getting into grad school, even though I had served on graduate admissions committees and the students hadn't.

Other professors gave the senior the same advice that I had. I hoped that by getting the same advice from other faculty, she'd learn to trust me and find my mentoring more useful. But the senior only applied to Masters programs, and didn't come to see me again.

Sometimes the right people to ask for advice are the people who know you well. (Knowing you well also counts as experience or expertise.) I occasionally get emails from students I don't know, in various parts of the world, asking me for advice specific to their situations. While I can sometimes give them very general advice, I emphasize that for specific advice, much more valuable is the advice they should get from professors who know them well and the people from whom they've taken courses. 

My advice to advisors is to make clear the limits of your relevant expertise and experience, and state your best guess as to how much confidence the advisee should or shouldn't have in your advice. If appropriate, suggest who else might be able to give more reliable advice.

I'll end by emphasizing the limits of my experience and expertise to advise on advice. Don't just listen to me. Be open to advice from anyone, paying special attention to those with expertise and experience, and to those who know you or your situation well.