kasuto

Thank you so much for all of your comments! I guess yeah, it's the first. But as he gave me the first authorship, it made me feel that I had the responsibility to "own the paper", which I guess was wrong of me...? (Correct me if I'm wrong tho, I'm still figuring it out.... x.x) Thank you for also reminding me of how important it is to build good relationships, @telkanuru and @Meraki!! I was at a point where I didn't care about it anymore ? My biggest issue is that I have had so many questions regarding his logic and suggestions from the beginning yet he hardly answers any of them, that's why I started to doubt him, which has been preventing me from having an open mind... But you're right, I need to be wiser and more patient when dealing with his advice since he's definitely much more experienced than me.

Brand new in academia here. I'm wondering to what extent our PIs should modify our draft, especially when their logic and ours are different? My mindset is, as the first author of the paper (which some people say I should be grateful for), I should at least try to write and submit the paper using my own logic so that I will be able to learn how I can improve it. Another problem is, my logic and my PI's are different and I believe his is no better than mine - which again, could change my mind if my paper eventually gets rejected. I'm just feeling so lost and demotivated; it feels like he's micromanaging me and I don't have any freedom in writing my own paper... I understand that if the paper gets rejected, it will affect him (that's what he said), so am I not supposed to feel this way?

Yes, it's possible! I had the same problem as I was working a software engineer when I wanted to shift to epidemiology research. Now I work as a short-term RA in the field (only temporarily, since I'm leaving for grad school this summer). What I did was persistently looking around for research positions and contacting different professors working in the field. It might be easier to work at a university than the industry when you don't have any research experience, I guess. I never received replies from the university job portal, though, so I ended up looking for professors' emails and contacting them directly. Another thing is, the Professor I work for right now happened to be looking for someone with programming background, so it's a huge plus if you possess the particular skill they're looking for and it doesn't have to be related to mechanical engineering. Good luck! PS: if you plan to apply for Master's in mech engg, finding something you've learned throughout your investment management career that could help you strive in mech engg would be incredibly helpful? I'm guessing that my desire to "utilize my computer science background in epidemiology" + my attempts in shifting to the field gave me a lot of advantages in getting offers from grad schools.

Thank you so much for your advice, @Meraki!!!!! You're right! His method is not completely wrong. It's oversimplified since it creates so many assumptions that people have actually already solved (based on my understanding so far). But following our argument, he told me recently that my questions are valid and the method is indeed too simple, but he plans to publish it first as the preliminary study and keep improving it in the next iteration (which made me feel so much better!). But yeah, meanwhile, I'll definitely try to understand the method from his perspective. ?

I'm brand new in academia and currently work as a Research Assistant. We're working on a paper where my Professor decided to assign me as the first author, but I'm not convinced by the method he proposed and he's pretty adamant about changing it. I have always been questioning the method and so far, he hasn't been able to answer any of my questions either. Additionally, when we asked other professors to review, they gave the comments/questions similar to mine. Finally, when I told him that I haven't been able to answer those questions and how it has been frustrating me, he said, "We don't aim high since we have a short timeline. We can set our scope in the introduction." He also said that we can just cite his previous published paper that utilizes the same method. What he said really demoralized me since I work mainly to gain experience; I didn't even expect that I would publish a paper in the beginning. My research friend told me that he might have a minimum number of published paper requirement, that's why he's trying to play it "safe". But is it common for researchers/professors to do that? Also, am I being too naive if I feel I shouldn't be the first author since I can't even explain with confidence why we're using the method? I know that some people say I should be grateful since my Professor is giving me the chance to become the first author, but I don't feel right... Would love to know your opinions!