A Terse Summary of My Feelings on Research-Project Supervision

Here is a terse summary of my philosophy on the projects that I supervise:

Question on assessment form: "Did the student complete the agreed upon work by the end of Hilary Term?"

My answer: "I don’t understand this question. Sorry. Projects end when you run out of time."


When it comes to publishing papers, this is qualified with things like "or you get bored or we decide it's time to work on something else", etc. But projects don't end. You run out of time, run out of money, get bored, decide to move on, need to get a job, etc. But there is always something else that one could do.