교수님 왈 "Do you want to take a look at the paper together now?"

 

 

While writing my paper, I often questioned by myself if I was on the right track (sometimes every 30 minutes). I decided to bring it to a meeting to discuss with my professor. During the meeting, I pulled up the paper on the screen and started explaining what I was trying to write, how I structured it, and my reasoning behind these choices.

Then my professor asked, "Do you want to take a look at the paper together now? or do you want me to take a look offline and leave comments?"

I thought it would be useful since in-person meetings lead to more vivid discussion and it's easier to exchange thoughts, especially considering he isn't always available. When he asked that question, I realized this reflected his working style for paper writing. Today, during a meeting at the company where I'm doing my internship, the exact same thought occurred to me. Someone was explaining what they'd written so far, how the paper's story flows paragraph by paragraph, without having a complete draft. And I felt the same way my advisor did.

 

Case 1: People ask questions and give feedback since that's the point of discussing paper writing in the meeting.

• You listen and raise questions, and then the speaker explains, and then what? Do you go through it line by line? Paragraph by paragraph? It's simply not efficient at all. This should be done offline after a draft is complete. The person was just asking for a sort of 'okay' sign. My point is you don't need this since you're leading the project. This largely overlaps with my previous blog post.

Case 2: Let's say you just want to explain the paper and people don't ask questions.

• Others in the meeting don't ask questions and just listen because they need more time to actually read the paper and think about their comments. In this case as well, why do you need to explain what you wrote? People can simply read it by themselves offline. They'll need to do this anyway. There's no point in discussing the paper in the meeting unless there's something specific to discuss that would be more beneficial to address in person, which is less likely most of the time.

Either way, it's likely to be a useless meeting. It just makes you less confident and makes it appear as if you're not making progress with your paper writing.

Don't discuss the writing itself in the meeting. Instead, write a draft and let them read it.