Dalmatian

To resurrect an older thread -- what do you do if the one making a comparison to other students is not necessarily yourself but your advisor? My advisor will bring up other students (often in younger cohorts) and point how they performed better than me on a general/abstract level in a particular seminar etc. I think my advisor thinks that he's being helpful, but I often feel like these kind of statements are more discouraging than beneficial to me. Is there a way that I could say something to him along the lines of how I think that I would benefit more from specific criticism about ways to improve based on my own performance than from general comparisons about how another student is "doing better" than me? Because at the end of the day, I'm working to beat my own weaknesses -- not trying to compete with other students (or at least that should be the goal, right?)

Do you think senior/more advanced grad students should proactively reach out to first year students to check in/see how they're doing/what they need help with etc? Or is it first year students' responsibility to initiate conversations with older grad students if they need help?

Has anyone here ever cried in front of a professor? Or have you ever had a student cry in front of you? Today I cried in front of a professor for the first time ever (though I slightly teared up once before with another prof). I've been struggling academically and during a meeting with one of my committee members today, he asked me why I thought I was doing poorly, if I felt unprepared for grad school based on my undergrad experience etc. And in trying to tell him that I regretted choosing the undergrad I did because I thought it was a mistake, I broke down. He was very kind, but I felt completely mortified. I never cry in front of anyone, including my therapist! I hope he doesn't think I was trying to garner sympathy. It was definitely an unplanned and unwanted response on my part.