Phew!

I was beginning to think that I needed to seriously re-evaluate how I approach male students. I was thinking maybe I am not good at the one-on-one with them?

In grad school, I was "given" one male undergrad and two female undergrads at various times. The two female undergrads are on papers I published; the male undergrad was somewhat inept. And the situation with him was one in which my PhD advisor actually handled it in a way that benefited me by essentially pawning him off on a lecturer in the department who was doing some research in our lab at the time. [As an aside, she never talked to the lecturer or me about it, she just directed his project so that it made sense for him to go to the lecturer with questions.]

When I was a TA in a lab course, I had great teaching moments with students. In retrospect, those with the male students tended to be with the "nerdy" kids. But it is easy to be excited about science when interacting with students who are already excited about science! And I had a student in introductory lab who I later TA'ed in an upper level lab and he and I would joke around. (He was a senior and I told him it was not fair that I had him as a freshman, now he was graduating and I was not. That was a funny moment.)

So I start my post-doc and I "get" an (male) undergrad right away. We talk about the project, the mutant we need to characterize and the one technique, from start to finish, that I want the undergrad to learn. We did everything together over the semester, with him doing all of the hands-on stuff and me giving him tips from my own experience before he would start something. We talk about his results and experimental and biological explanations for what he sees. He does okay with this, but it would help if he had read the three papers I asked him to read a couple of months earlier...

Then I went away for two weeks. So that he was all set to do one complete round of the experiment that we had gone through together multiple times ("To include in a publication!!!!" I tell him), we talk about all the details like incubation temperatures (an why), how to set up the samples so that there will be sample left over when I get back for him to use with a new technique (how exciting, right!!!!), and we write it down. When I get back, none of the detailed protocol changes that we wrote down ahead of time are documented in his notebook, he has funky results, and he used the entire sample. So for a publication I would need to repeat the experiment. Seriously, I think the only thing I could have done differently was to have him write those plans down again to really get them in his head.

So I am essentially 0-2 on the male undergrads. Now, though, I am supervising one PhD rotation and half supervising a master's student research course, both male. So far so good. I gave the PhD student the start of a working protocol and asked him to fill in the rest (which he hasn't done, but with his experience and being a PhD student, I am leaving that up to him to figure out...is that wrong?); the master's student just started yesterday, but we have already had some good conversation (science and non). I have my fingers crossed.

[Now, I think I have high expectations as a teacher, but am patient unless I feel disrespected. I have good conversation moments with my undergrad now, but they are never when we are in teacher-student mode. The female undergrads I worked with both had different requirements - one was more hands-on and one more independent, but it worked out. Do I need a new frame-of-mind, and not just different managing and teaching techniques, for male undergrads?]