Analysis of hard working summer student - Essay Example

3 February, What is the primary responsibility of the mentor? The primary responsibility of the mentor is to handle the student in such a manner that would suppress his weaknesses and enhance his strengths. In order to achieve this, the mentor should take the student into confidence and convince him not to send his paper for publishing in the way it currently is. Instead, the mentor should have a discussion with the students inquiring about the sources of data and the reason behind over-experimentation of certain aspects.

The student’s response would most likely reveal his potential weak areas. The mentor should offer him sincere guidance and coaching in those areas so that he may amend the analysis and hence, the whole paper before forwarding it for getting published. The mentor should not send the paper without raising the student’s work to the level suitable for writing publishable papers. Should the mentor simply edit the student’s paper and send it for publication? No, the mentor should neither make an attempt to edit the student’s paper nor send it for publication on his behalf.

Although if the mentor does so, this would provide the student with an instant relief and he would feel rewarded for his effort so far, yet the instant relief would ultimately prove harmful for the student. If the student is made to have a hard time now, he is likely to put in more effort in an attempt to make the paper publishable as per the required standards. In the course of trying that, the student would indeed learn all what would benefit him for the rest of his life as a researcher. Should the mentor write a short paper of her own, based on the student’s data, and send it for publication?

Writing a paper based on the data collected and complied by the student is out of question for the mentor because it is fundamentally the data, that he sees problems with. As mentioned in the case study, the student had some unrecognized data and some of the experiments were conducted repeatedly without a sound justification for the same. In such circumstances, it is highly unadvisable for the mentor to process the very data and write a paper based on that for getting published. Capabilities of the sender of a paper are acknowledged from the integrity of his/her research.

Such experienced researchers as the mentor are usually quite well known for their capability. In such a case, sending paper based on the student’s data would come as a blow to the reputation of the mentor as a researcher. Are there other actions the mentor should take now? Are there any actions she should have taken previously? If the mentor wants to convert the student into a potential researcher, she should not give any importance to the deadline for paper submission. The idea here is to enhance the research capability of the student so that he may keep writing as many papers as he can for getting published in the time to come.

As of now, the mentor should make the student read more papers so as to basically grasp the concept and theme of research, and make him analyze his mistakes himself after slightly pointing towards the actual problematic areas. This would cause the student to use his mind, and the learning he would thus gain, would benefit him throughout his career. As a supervisor, the mentor should have closely and properly supervised the student from the very start so that his weaknesses could be identified earlier, and necessary actions could have been taken so that the paper could get published by the end of summer.