{"id":997,"date":"2011-03-05T01:31:36","date_gmt":"2011-03-05T01:31:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/vwxynot\/?p=997"},"modified":"2011-03-05T01:31:36","modified_gmt":"2011-03-05T01:31:36","slug":"random-sampling-and-ambush-mentoring","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/vwxynot\/2011\/03\/05\/random-sampling-and-ambush-mentoring\/","title":{"rendered":"Random sampling and ambush mentoring"},"content":{"rendered":"

The teacher I had when I was seven or eight had a great approach to teaching us our multiplication tables. Sure, we did some rote learning and some whole-class recitals of the tables, but her favourite method was to surprise us with (seemingly) random questions. The class would be in the middle of an English lesson, or making Easter cards, or enjoying quiet reading time, and she’d suddenly bark “[Name]: what’s seven times eight?”, expecting that kid to answer in front of the whole class. It certainly kept us on our toes.<\/p>\n

My PhD supervisor enjoyed using similar tactics. You’d be innocently passaging cells in the tissue culture room only to jump out of your skin as he sidled up behind you and suddenly asked you to summarise your principal hypothesis or your most recent results; you’d pop into his office late on a Friday afternoon to show him your latest Western blot, only to get thoroughly grilled for an hour or so about your grasp of the literature and\/or proper experimental design. Again, the value of the exercise was well worth the stress of always being on your guard.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

One of the PIs I work with has just started doing something similar. In the middle of grilling one student during a lab meeting presentation this week, he suddenly turned to a different<\/em> student, who wasn’t expecting to have to contribute, and asked them to describe how the large T antigen <\/a>transforms cells. It took everyone by surprise, especially the student in question, who couldn’t remember the right answer from their undergrad lectures. But I bet everyone’ll be more prepared from now on…<\/p>\n

…including me…<\/p>\n

I think ambush mentoring is great – even when I don’t know whether I’m a likely target!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The teacher I had when I was seven or eight had a great approach to teaching us our multiplication tables. Sure, we did some rote learning and some whole-class recitals of the tables, but her favourite method was to surprise … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-997","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-education","category-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/vwxynot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/997","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/vwxynot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/vwxynot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/vwxynot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/vwxynot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=997"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/vwxynot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/997\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/vwxynot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=997"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/vwxynot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=997"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/vwxynot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=997"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}