How much is too much as far as contacting my advisor?

[gradschoolnutty]

I've been working on a research project with several people - everyone is established in the field and I am a newbie. They send emails back and forth, and I usually don't contribute because... I'm terrified to! Anyway, recently I've discovered some interesting findings and I emailed my advisor with these findings... it was a pretty long email.

I'm curious to know... do you usually wait until your meeting with your advisor before sharing findings? Or do you email him/her when you come across something interesting?

[zonko]

I've been working on a research project with several people - everyone is established in the field and I am a newbie. They send emails back and forth, and I usually don't contribute because... I'm terrified to! Anyway, recently I've discovered some interesting findings and I emailed my advisor with these findings... it was a pretty long email.

I'm curious to know... do you usually wait until your meeting with your advisor before sharing findings? Or do you email him/her when you come across something interesting?

Unless you are meeting very infrequently, it is usually better to wait IMO

[iLikeTrees]

I feel like we say this a lot in this site, but it depends a lot on you & your advisor.

For me there's a ton of back and forth with my advisor, both in person and in email. We meet every two weeks, but in the meantime if anything comes up which she should be filled in or if I have something to ask it's completely fine to email or just pop into her office (for quick things). She was always more than happy to see new results or give me feedback on not finished grant applications or thesis sections. It also goes the other way though: it's not unusual for me to be working in the lab (across from her office) and she pops in and out with questions and comments or send emails about random lab stuff. In our lab group all of us (advisor and students) are constantly sharing papers, relevant findings, etc. I really like the open flow of communication in our lab and it really helps keep everybody on the same page and heads off problems early.

Not to generalize, but I think younger professors with smaller labs have less of a problem than this than professors with large labs. I think if an advisor has tons of grad students, it would probably be hard to get anything done if advisees were constantly sending stuff looking for feedback.