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Hinton Lab

My Expectations of You

My expectations of you are:

  • Produce consistent and high-quality work.
  • Have an urgency to publish that I can facilitate.
  • Refine and expand your technical, writing, and oral presentation skills.
  • Develop an individual development plan (IDP) and work with me to develop skills in the IDP that are required for your career.
  • Ensure that you meet regularly with me by organizing such meetings and then provide me with updates on the progress and results of your activities and experiments.
  • Make sure you also use this time to communicate new ideas that you have about your work and present to me any difficulties you may have. If you run into a roadblock, you should seek to overcome it. However, if it continues to impede further progress, I cannot help until you inform me of it.
  • Maintain your progress by establishing your own daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly goals and deadlines.
  • I will work with you to establish these, especially the longer-term goals, but you are ultimately responsible for the short-term goals. To be successful in my lab or any academic pursuit, you must consistently meet these deadlines or examine why you are not. You set them, and you should use these goals to push yourself.
  • Maintain required training and seek out relevant training opportunities.
  • Take initiative and be willing to ask for new assignments upon successful completion of tasks.
  • Read papers on your own to better learn how to plan, design, and execute high-quality scientific research with my assistance.
  • Be receptive to learning how to properly document experiments in a lab notebook and present experiments in writing and orally.
  • Listen to others in your lab and to your mentors.
  • Don’t be afraid to ask questions when you are unsure of anything, and understand that learning is key, so it is always important to ask questions.\
  • The most important element is communication—good, productive communication. If things are difficult, or if you need help, please communicate this, as I want to help. Productivity, at its core, ebbs and flows, and sometimes the stresses of life can inhibit timely work. During such times, I want to be a resource to you. Communicate with me when such times happen, and we can work to help you remain successful. Similarly, if things are going great, I want to hear about that too!